| Sign Up | Google+

Beating Save Percentage to Death Part 1: Age

I've looked at even strength save percentage for all goalies from 1998-2010. The data for 1997-1998 for special teams on the NHL.com web site is flawed, so I have omitted it.

Unweighted

A first look at the relationship comes from unweighted data. Each goalie is one data point, whether he played 1 game or 80. Here is the scatter plot:

Agesaveunwt_bmp_medium

 

via 2.bp.blogspot.com

Model Summary

 

R

R Square

Adjusted R Square

Std. Error of the Estimate

 

.04

.00

.00

.04

REGRESSION

 

 

Sum of Squares

df

Mean Square

F

Significance

 

Regression

.00

1

.00

1.23

.27

 

Residual

1.22

960

.00

 

 

 

Total

1.22

961

 

 

 

Coefficients

 

 

B

Std. Error

Beta

t

Significance

 

(Constant)

.90

.01

.00

129.87

.00

 

Age

.00

.00

.04

1.11

.27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, the slope of save percentage over age isn't just close to 0.0, it is 0.0.

 

Weighted

We can rerun the regression, using shots faced as a weighting factor. The scatter plot does not look any more promising:

Agesavewt_bmp_medium

via 2.bp.blogspot.com

Model Summary

 

R

R Square

Adjusted R Square

Std. Error of the Estimate

 

.11

.01

.01

.00

REGRESSION

 

 

Sum of Squares

df

Mean Square

F

Significance

 

Regression

.00

1

.00

.26

.61

 

Residual

.00

21

.00

 

 

 

Total

.00

22

 

 

 

Coefficients

 

 

B

Std. Error

Beta

t

Significance

 

(Constant)

.91

.00

.00

261.15

.00

 

Age

.00

.00

.11

.51

.61

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, indeed, it is not any better.

Serial Measures

One last way to look for a relationship would be to look at each goalie relative to himself as he ages.  For this analysis, I have restricted the analysis to goalies with at least 3 seasons.  For each goalie, I computed his personal slope.  We can then look at the average of these slopes.  The null hypothesis is that the average slope is 0.0.

DISTRIBUTION PARAMETER ESTIMATES

 

========================================================

Slope (N = 140) Mean = -0.001 Variance = 0.000 Std.Dev. = 0.011

0.950 Confidence Interval for mean : -0.003 to 0.001

 

 


Once again, the slope is not significantly different from 0.0.

 

Conclusion

Analyzing the data every way I can think up, there is no evidence whatsoever of any relationship between goalie age and even strength save percentage.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Recent FanPosts

View All Fan Posts

The Next FanPosts

There are 23 Comments. Load Now. Loading

Shortcuts to mastering the comment thread. Use wisely.

C - Next Comment
X - Mark as Read

R - Reply
Z - Mark Read & Next

Shift + C - Previous
Shift + A - Mark All Read

Comment Settings

Live comment alert: Hide it!

Comments for this post are closed.

tracking_pixel_5351_tracker