Category: Understanding Advanced Stats

Placeholder image for 2013 NHL Playoffs: Are we to believe the Toronto Maple Leafs are hitting their way to the Stanley Cup?

2013 NHL Playoffs: Are we to believe the Toronto Maple Leafs are hitting their way to the Stanley Cup?

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 23rd 2019 | 3 min read |

I am well aware that I went the entire 2012-13 NHL season without contributing even a single sentence of value to this enterprise, snarky sentence fra...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: Zone Shift Masters

Advanced Metrics: Zone Shift Masters

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 19th 2019 | 14 min read |

We track Zone Starts on behindthenet.ca, and the impact they have on a player's stats seems to have registered with the media and some portion of...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: PDO streaks and season-long performance spreads

Advanced Metrics: PDO streaks and season-long performance spreads

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 18th 2019 | 2 min read |

Here are the best and worst Shooting %, Save % and PDO over the last four seasons: Min Max Sh% 6.7 11 Sv% 891 938 PDO 975 1037 This is really intended...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: PDO and regression to the mean

Advanced Metrics: PDO and regression to the mean

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 18th 2019 | 1 min read |

I'm still not sure everyone has completely internalized the lessons of PDO (shooting percentage + save percentage), so I wanted to look at the re...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: How useful is raw +/-?

Advanced Metrics: How useful is raw +/-?

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 18th 2019 | 6 min read |

Someone asked friend of the blog Neil Greenberg how reliable individual +/- is. I think it's very reliable – in fact, you would do reasonabl...

Placeholder image for PDO: If you were going to understand just one NHL statistic

PDO: If you were going to understand just one NHL statistic

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 18th 2019 | 2 min read |

People sometimes ask me what the single-most useful statistic is in hockey. Obviously if we had a reliable way to measuring how many wins a player con...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: The top PDO dynasties of all-time

Advanced Metrics: The top PDO dynasties of all-time

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 15th 2019 | 7 min read |

For those of you who aren't familiar with PDO, it is just Save Percentage plus Shooting Percentage [more precisely: PDO=1000*(G/SF+SV/SA)]. What&#...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: The homer referee bias

Advanced Metrics: The homer referee bias

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 15th 2019 | 9 min read |

It's tough to be an NHL referee – though the days of being physically attacked by fans and players are history, there's no one else on t...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metrics: Do Goalies Need to Face Shots in Order to Stop Shots?

Advanced Metrics: Do Goalies Need to Face Shots in Order to Stop Shots?

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 15th 2019 | 1 min read |

Rich Pollock asked me an interesting question the other day: “I was watching the Sens today, and the announcers kept saying that Leclaire hadn&#...

Placeholder image for Advanced Metric Frequently Asked Questions #10: Wins above replacement

Advanced Metric Frequently Asked Questions #10: Wins above replacement

By gabrieldesjardins | Feb 15th 2019 | 4 min read |

This is Part 10 in what I hope will be just a ten part series of answers to frequently asked questions about hockey analysis. Here are Part 1, Part 2,...