12/17/10 Det-Chi Passing
by Hawerchuk on Feb 11, 2011 8:00 AM EST
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Back in December, I put out feelers for people to score the 12/17 Detroit-Chicago game. I even offered to pay. I ended up with data for the third period of the game that's an absolute treasure trove. (In case you ever want to do it yourself, a Hawks fan - known only as E. Gao - spent 18 hours recording the data.)
I have weeks of analysis that will come out of this, so I'm going to start with something basic: passing. First, let's look at some top-level passing stats:
| Total | Dz | Oz | D->D | D->N | O->D/N | O->O | |
| Det Inc | 22 | 3 | 15 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 13 |
| Det Comp | 102 | 45 | 34 | 30 | 15 | 0 | 34 |
| Det Tot | 124 | 48 | 49 | 31 | 17 | 2 | 47 |
| Det % | 82 | 94 | 69 | 97 | 88 | 0 | 72 |
| Chi Inc | 14 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 5 |
| Chi Comp | 46 | 25 | 14 | 24 | 1 | 1 | 13 |
| Chi Tot | 60 | 34 | 19 | 28 | 5 | 1 | 18 |
| Chi % | 77 | 74 | 74 | 86 | 20 | 100 | 72 |
Detroit was trailing 3-1 going into the 3rd, so we knew they were going to control the puck (and the passing) most of the time. Overall, they generated 2/3 of the total passes in the period. You can also see that Detroit was much more aggressive than Chicago - they made 47 passes in the offensive zone, compared to 18 for Chicago; they passed from inside their own blue line to outside of it 17 times to just 5 for Chicago; and they completed 30/31 d-zone passes compared to 24/28 for Chicago.
Regardless of the length of the pass, the passing proportions don't really deviate from the 2/3 ratio:
| Length | 0-10 | 10-20 | 20-30 | 30-40 | 40-50 | 50-60 | 60-70 | 70-80 | 80-90 | 90-100 |
| Det Inc | 3 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Det Comp | 0 | 16 | 28 | 21 | 17 | 11 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Chi Inc | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Chi Comp | 3 | 6 | 9 | 14 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Detroit simply tried more of everything. A graphical representation is probably helpful:
Completed passes are represented by solid lines, while incomplete passes are dashed. Some breakout passes that must have gone along the boards are shown as direct lines from point-to-point, which might look a little funny.
At any rate, there's a lot to come - individual passing; time of possession by zone; analysis of what happened when Detroit pulled Jimmy Howard for 1:22. If you have any suggestions, please fill up the comment box!
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I’m falling hard for those passing charts.
Does he call it Luongo underwear?
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by Bettman's Nightmare on Feb 11, 2011 8:34 AM EST reply actions 1 recs
/swoons
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by Geoff Detweiler on Feb 11, 2011 9:18 AM EST reply actions
E. Gao spent 18 hours on this?
That man(or woman) is a hero.
I too, stongly approve of those passing charts.
On the Mike Weber bandwagon (no longer with a lack of stupid boarding penalties!)
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18 hours
over the course of about six weeks, haha. It gets pretty hard to focus after five (game) minutes.
wait keep a low profile
My hockey-related comment: Thowing an octopus on the ice is the dumbest meme in professional sports. I'd rather throw waffles.
by puppetmasterp on Feb 11, 2011 10:17 PM EST up reply actions
err..."way"
My hockey-related comment: Thowing an octopus on the ice is the dumbest meme in professional sports. I'd rather throw waffles.
by puppetmasterp on Feb 11, 2011 10:17 PM EST up reply actions
I assuem “interceptions” are included among the incompletes?
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assume even.
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by George E. Ays on Feb 11, 2011 9:23 AM EST up reply actions
how does soccer do it?
The Guardian (and English newspaper site) has something called “chalkboards” that let’s you filter for players, teams, etc in an individual game and let’s you see passing charts, spots on the field for interceptions, etc. Couldn’t the NHL add the same techonology or is it just an army of stat goons recording everything? By the way, I use the word “goon” lovingly.
Ryan
Matchsticks & Gasoline, Hockey Prospectus, &Sports Opinionated. My twitter handle is @sprtopinionated
Those chalkboards are unbelievable. I think that they can do it because they have cameras and systems at field level around the pitch. I know Rafa Benitez at Liverpool was a huge proponent of using those stats.
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Furthermore soccer is a slower game and hence easier. Also they must have more than one guy doing it
Rebuild is a convenient excuse for GMs who dont wish to do their jobs
If it’s not done electronically, then it would take way more than one guy to do it. It’s nuts.
Ryan
Matchsticks & Gasoline, Hockey Prospectus, &Sports Opinionated. My twitter handle is @sprtopinionated
Can I assume anything about the portion of the passes that came from a specific area or went to a specific area? Like, for instance, if over half of Chicago’s completed passes stayed within the D-zone, does that mean Detroit had a crazy-good forecheck? I’ve always thought that it would probably take one D→D pass per rush up the ice, even for a dump in, but that if it got to be more than that, a team was having a lot of difficulty getting it out of the zone. In the same sense, will you be analyzing this for the number of passes per possession, of some other derivative?
This is just straight up amazing stuff. Imagine in the future when they finally put a tracking device in the puck and digitize all of this information immediately for every period of every game! Wow. I’m kind of giddy!
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I’d much rather they put a chip in the puck so that it could be shown streaking across the screen like a laser beam. It really helped me track the puck.
Ryan
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The key though is different colors for different speeds. I mean, when I see a shot, I wanna know if that thing is a blue streak or a fiery red comet.
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If I’m not mistaken, the glowing puck technology was the basis for the Picth-FX system in baseball.
So don’t laugh too hard. That was a digital process with a data stream somewhere in it. I’d do very bad thing to very nice people to get those data stream.
The Glow-Puck also became the NFL’s first-down line.
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by Cornelius Hardenbergh on Feb 14, 2011 10:57 AM EST up reply actions
It’s not exactly surprising, but the chart makes it plain as day: the preponderance of LHD results in serious breakout asymmetry. For this reason, I’ve always felt that RHD are more valuable commodities than LHD.
I wonder if there is any evidence that similarly skilled RHD get paid more than LHD.
by sisu on Feb 11, 2011 3:36 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
It would be interesting to see this same chart for a team with 3 RHD.
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Sample includes Lidstrom and Keith, so don’t draw too many general conclusions.
This is great stuff, Gabe.
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by Bruce McCurdy on Feb 11, 2011 10:07 PM EST up reply actions
Detroit runs their breakout with the RD behind the net, LD stationary along the left wall, and the RW in motion along the right wall. So, their chart would tend to skew toward the left even if they had more RHD, since they’re likely to pass the puck out of the zone if they go up the left wall, but carry the puck out if they go up the right. Of course, more RHD could compell them to run a different setup.
Detroit's D-zone passes
The success rate of Detroit’s passes in their own zone is incredible – 94%. Hell, I’d say that’s a solid number for just a practice let alone with another team on the ice. Seems like the Hawks were really hanging back there.
What I also found interesting is the Hawks defensive zone and offensive zone passing success rates were equivalent – I would have expected defensive zone passing rates to be more successful than offensive, just due to more aggressive defense being played in a team’s own end (at a minimum, you’d expect some passes in a defensive zone to have no checking at all from the other team due to line changes). But for Chicago, you’ve got a 74% success rate for passes starting in either end. That makes me think Detroit was really being aggressive on the forecheck and hounding them all over the ice.
What also seems weird is that Chicago and Detroit had similar amount of shots (7 shots for Detroit and 6 for Chicago – not sure on shot attempts, as this is the first one I dug up at nhl.com). With all of Detroit’s passes in the offensive end, and with them trailing, I would have thought they’d have peppered a lot more shots than Chicago. Actually, I would have expected Detroit to have a much lower “offensive zone pass per shot” than Chicago, but it seems the inverse is true – it looks like Chicago was the one just shooting at first opportunity while Detroit kept looking for a better scoring chance / keeping possession.
Stupid question on the graph … which end is the defensive versus offensive zone? It looks like -ve distance is your offensive end while +ve distance is your defensive zone (trying to match the passing stats in the chart to number of lines in the graph by eye). If I’m right in that interpretation, it surprises me how many of the Hawks’ passes involve the middle of the ice in their own end. It seems counterintuitive that everything else indicates they’re being forechecked pretty heavily, but then they can have a lot of successful passes from right around the slot in their own end.
Ok … so then it’s a pattern for both teams that there are more passes in front of your own net than your opponents (on an absolute basis at least). Not what I would have expected to see at all.
It was surprisingly fun, though rigorous.
and I might actually go back and look at the first two periods in my free time, just because I knew the score effects (DET being down two goals) would skew the passing/possession data pretty heavily in the third period.
(Am I the only one who finished? I seriously thought I was holding everyone back!)
(Am I the only one who finished? I seriously thought I was holding everyone back!)
I don’t know, but you’re definitely pushing things forward. Grea twork.
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by John Fischer on Feb 12, 2011 1:04 AM EST up reply actions
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