Picking The NHL's Difference-Makers
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by user Davis21wylie
Ah, hockey... Welcome back to the national consciousness. Game 3 of what is quickly becoming a one-sided Stanley Cup Final is tomorrow night, in prime-time -- and on national television (NBC), no less. If you've tuned out to this point (and, let's face it, most people have), now might be a nice time to get re-acquainted with the fast-paced sport of hockey... the self-proclaimed "Coolest Sport on Earth".
If you're like me, you probably vowed never to care about the NHL again after the owners and players conspired to kill the entire 2004-05 season in a supreme act of greed. However (to me at least), hockey proved to be a lot like that girl that you just know will ultimately break your heart, and yet you just can't stay away: During the Olympics, the seeds were planted as I watched Sweden win gold with a cast of characters that I recognized from the pre-lockout days. Soon, I was watching NBC's Saturday coverage. And by playoff time, I had taken her back completely, forgiving all of the sins of the past. Am I a fool in love? Well, let's just hope that hockey treats me better than the real-life girl did...
Anyway, one of my main complaints about watching the NHL upon its return from lockout hell was the wild player movement -- as one of my friends noted, it felt like someone had stolen his Sega Genesis and randomized his NHL 1994 rosters, leaving the powerful secret weapon of Jeremy Roenick nowhere to be found. The same was true of this year's NHL (Roenick was with the Kings, by the way): Few of the powerhouses from when we last left the league were really that powerful this season, save for the Detroit Red Wings (and they were embarrassed in Round 1 of the playoffs). What's more, the radical rule changes instituted before the season rendered some formerly-good players obsolete, leaving fans needing a program just to identify the superstars.
So, who were the superstars this season? Well, if you've read this far through my meandering discourse on life, love, and the NHL, congratulations: it's time to meet the Difference-Makers in the New NHL, where speed rules again, and the neutral zone is no longer the sole territory of jersey-clutching goons who skate like they're mired in quicksand.
Of course, the question of how to determine who the Difference-Makers actually are still remains. Hockey's traditional statistics are notoriously sketchy indicators of value; hell, the league didn't even track minutes until 2001 (something the NBA's accounted for since 1952). Mercifully, there are some bright minds on top of the problem, namely the Hockey Analysis Group, and sites like Puckerings and The Hockey Project. Using some of their methods (and some of my own), we'll find the elusive Difference-Makers, those players who can make their teams play better when they are on the ice.
The Statistical Jibberish
(Feel free to skip this section, lest your mind literally explode)
Skaters
For offense, we'll use something called Goals Created, which may sound familiar to Bill James fans, as it is analogous to Runs Created in baseball. GC simply evaluates the number of team goals a player "creates" for his team through his various offensive actions. First off, here are the 2005-06 leaders:
Rank Player Team G A GC -------------------------------------------- 1. Jaromir Jagr NYR 54 69 46 2. A. Ovechkin WSH 52 54 41 3. Joe Thornton SJ-BOS 29 96 41 4. Dany Heatley OTT 50 53 40 5. Ilya Kovalchuk ATL 52 46 39 --------------------------------------------
This is hardly the end of the story, though. While GC covers the scorers fairly well, it does a piss-poor job of crediting players whose job it is to keep the other team from scoring. Defense has been elusive to measure in pretty much every sport, and hockey is certainly no exception. The NHL's lone "official" defensive stat (I'm not counting the RTSS stuff), Plus/Minus, is admirable but flawed, because it looks at offense and defense at the same time.
Plus/Minus is not completely broken, though, because it is derived from the goals scored and allowed by a team while a player is on the ice. If we just looked at the minuses, then, we might shed some light on the defensive mystery. Enter the Personal Goals Against Average, which is simply a Goals Against Average for each skater when they're on the ice, with a few adjustments (including measures designed to keep from punishing players on penalty-kill units). Here, then, are the 2005-06 leaders:
Forwards (Min. 800 MP) Team PGAA -------------------------------------------- 1. Alex Kovalev MTL 0.72 2. M. Samuelsson DET 1.29 3. Peter Forsberg PHI 1.58 4. Chris Neil OTT 1.62 5. Shean Donovan CGY 1.62 --------------------------------------------
NHL afficionados will likely cringe at the sight of Kovalev topping a defensive list, but remember what the formula measures -- how rarely the other team scores when the player is on the ice. Since it's hard to score when the other team has the puck, Kovalev's puck-dominating style seems to help the defense. I guess it's true, what they always say about the best defense being a good offense...
Defensemen (Min. 800 MP) Team PGAA -------------------------------------------- 1. Brian Pothier OTT 1.65 2. Nolan Baumgartner VAN 1.68 3. Freddy Meyer PHI 1.71 4. Joe Corvo LA 1.81 5. Ron Hainsey CBJ 1.85 --------------------------------------------
A bunch of stay-at-home types here, no surprises. Aside from a few hiccups regarding puck-hogging types like Kovalev and Jaromir Jagr, the system can separate the standouts from the stiffs fairly well.
We now have offensive and defensive measures, but how do we put it all together? It's simple, using the Pythagorean Formula. We'll extrapolate each player's GC/Min to estimate what a team of 5 clones of that player would score per game, and use their PGAA as Goals Allowed/Game. Plug the numbers into the equation, and come up with a Player Winning %. To convert to wins, simply divide the player's total minutes on ice by (60 * 5) to arrive at "Games", and multiply the PW% by this figure to determine Wins Created. And if we really want to get Jamesian, we can even multiply the resultant Wins Created by three to arrive at... Win Shares! Nice, huh? Here are the 2005-06 leaders in Win Shares:
Rank Player Team Win Shares ---------------------------------------- 1. Nicklas Lidstrom DET 17 2. Jaromir Jagr NYR 17 3. Ilya Kovalchuk ATL 16 4. Sergei Zubov DAL 16 5. Dany Heatley OTT 16 6. A. Ovechkin WSH 16 7. Marian Hossa ATL 15 8. L. Visnovsky LA 15 9. Joe Thornton SJ 15 10. Tomas Kaberle TOR 15 ----------------------------------------
Goalies
What about the netminders, though? We've got them covered, and it's a lot easier, I promise. All we have to do is find out, using Save Percentage, how many goals each 'tender would have allowed had they faced the league-average number of shots per 60 minutes (this filters out the distortion of team defense present in Goals Against Average). Using this new "Neutral GAA" -- and plugging in the league's average number of Goals/Game as the goalie's offensive support -- we can turn to Pythagoras again, deriving a "Goalie Win %". Similar to the skaters, we find the goalie's "Adjusted Games" by dividing their Minutes Played by (60 * 5); we then multiply the Games by the Winning % for Wins Created, and multiply this by three for Win Shares. Phew! The 2005-06 leaders:
Goalies Team Win Shares -------------------------------------------- 1. Miikka Kiprusoff CGY 28 2. Roberto Luongo FLA 25 3. Martin Brodeur NJ 25 4. Tomas Vokoun NSH 22 5. Manny Fernandez MIN 21 --------------------------------------------
That was fun, wasn't it? Armed with these tools, we can now tackle who should take home the hardware at the NHL's Awards Ceremony in Vancouver on June 22...
Picking the Awards
(If you're skipping down, pick up again here... The math is all over with. I mean it.)
Calder Memorial Trophy (Rookie of the Year)
The Nominees:
- Sidney Crosby, Pittsburgh Penguins
- Alexander Ovechkin, Washington Capitals
- Dion Phaneuf, Calgary Flames
And the winner is... Ovechkin. He edged the more-heralded Crosby 16-14 in terms of Win Shares, and created 4 more goals. Phaneuf's 13 WS was very impressive for a rookie as well.
Frank J. Selke Trophy (Best Defensive Forward)
The Nominees:
And the winner is... Lehtinen. Jere beats Brind'Amour by a slim margin in PGAA, 2.22 to 2.37. Fisher doesn't look that great in my defensive metric, finishing at just 2.82 despite Ottawa's stellar team defense.
Jack Adams Award (Coach of the Year)
The Nominees:
And the winner is... Laviolette. I don't have any fancy formula for this category, but Laviolette's work in '06 has been little short of magnificent. And now he's on the verge of delivering the Hurricane/Whalers franchise its first Stanley Cup in 25 seasons. Give him the Adams!
Norris Memorial Trophy (Best Defenseman)
The Nominees:
- Nicklas Lidstrom, Detroit Red Wings
- Scott Niedermayer, Anaheim Mighty Ducks
- Sergei Zubov, Dallas Stars
And the winner is... Lidstrom. Actually, Lidstrom is (at worst) the second-most valuable non-goalie in the entire NHL according to Win Shares, as his 17 tied him with Jaromir Jagr for the league lead. Zubov also had an outstanding year, notching 16 WS, and Niedermayer racked up 14 Win Shares, ranking him 8th among defensemen.
Lady Byng Memorial Trophy (Sportsmanship)
The Nominees:
- Pavel Datsyuk, Detroit Red Wings
- Patrick Marleau, San Jose Sharks
- Brad Richards, Tampa Bay Lightning
And the winner is... Datsyuk. Datsyuk spent just 22 minutes in the sin bin in 75 games; Marleau's 26 in 82 games was a slightly higher per-game PIM average. Richards was practically the brawler of this group, sitting out a whopping 32 PIM in 82 games played.
Vezina Trophy (Best Goalie)
The Nominees:
- Martin Brodeur, New Jersey Devils
- Miikka Kiprusoff, Calgary Flames
- Henrik Lundqvist, New York Rangers
And the winner is... Kiprusoff. Miikka is the man! His 28 Win Shares topped second-place Brodeur by 3, and his Save % was 12 points higher than New Jersey's (outstanding nonetheless) netminder. Lundqvist put up phenomenal numbers as a rookie, and could have a whole cabinet of these trophies before he's through.
Lester B. Pearson Award (MVP as voted by NHLPA)
The Nominees:
- Jaromir Jagr, New York Rangers
- Alexander Ovechkin, Washington Capitals
- Joe Thornton, San Jose Sharks
And the winner is... Jagr. No player has ever won the Pearson as a rookie (sorry, Alexander), and no player has ever won the Pearson while playing for more than one team during the season (sorry, Joe). That leaves Jagr, who not only had hands-down his best season since leaving Pittsburgh in 2001, but also one of the best in his storied career.
Hart Memorial Trophy (MVP)
The Nominees:
And the winner is... Kiprusoff. Jose Theodore was the last goalie to win the Hart, way back in 2002, but Kiprusoff deserves it. His .923 Save Percentage ranked only behind Cristobal Huet and Dominik Hasek -- and Kiprusoff played almost as minutes as those two combined! Jagr is a close second, and Thornton (while overrated by his assists) had a dynamite season, maybe the best of what has been an inconsistent career.
Bonus Trophy:
Stanley Cup
And the winner is... The Carolina Hurricanes. Duh.
Well, that's it. If you've stayed with me all the way down to here, you might want to see a mental health professional... Still, for your troubles, you deserve something special. So I'll tell you a secret -- you know those those numbers on Lost? It's Donald Trump's VISA number! See, it was all worth it. Until next October, my time is up. You've been great. Enjoy the Strawberry Alarm Clock.
Date
Fri 06/09/06, 1:39 pm EST
