The advanced stats trend achieved a milestone today: public acceptance of the movement by the NHL.
It’s been a long, arduous struggle for the advanced stats community that dates back to the 2004-2005 NHL Lockout. As the Marek vs. Wyshysnki podcast has noted often, the Internet kept hockey alive during those difficult hockey-less days. The Internet gave fans a venue to maintain a connection to the sport they love. Hockey blogs arose, and when the NHL returned to the ice in the fall of 2005, the progressive minds behind those blogs began to look deeper into the game. Major League Baseball’s “Moneyball” revolution had firmly taken root, and a similar movement in hockey began.
But after a decade of being disregarded and ignored by voices in the main stream media, today is a victory for the so-called geeks.
Metrics long espoused by independent hockey researchers, bloggers, and Twitter personalities such as Corsi, Fenwick, and PDO now appear on the NHL’s website, although under different names. Corsi has become “SAT” or shot attempts. Fenwick has become “USAT” or unblocked shot attempts. PDO has become “SVSP%” or shooting percentage plus save percentage. The naming of these statistics drew backlash from the countless hockey minds that had internalized and grown accustomed to Corsi and in a league whose MVP trophy is called the Hart Trophy, a Corsi stat would not have been out of place.
But in order to gain widespread acceptance, self-evident names were probably necessary. It’s the same reason the league decided against naming its divisions Orr, Lemieux, Gretzky, and Howe, or returning to the glory days of the Norris, Adams, Patrick, and Smythe divisions: those names are barriers to entry for casual fans. For us diehards, it’s unfortunate. In the long run, SAT is easier to understand than Corsi.
The naming of statistics was hardly the only point of contention. Game-close metrics have essentially been debunked, yet the NHL’s rollout features plenty of them. It lists SAT ahead, behind, and even, but does not show the much more important score-adjusted metric that sites like fenwick-stats.com do.
An even worse oversight is not including a way to filter for minutes played. Hence, the “SAT%” (Corsi%) column, the most important column of all, lists…*drumroll, please*…Boston’s Matt Lindblad as the leader. He’s played two games. Miikka Salomaki of Nashville, and his one game played, sit in second.
The Washington Post’s self-proclaimed stats geek Neil Greenberg summed up the launch well:
I don't know what I was expecting with new http://t.co/PhYQdldew9 adv stats site, but overall disappointed. The look and feel is not great
— Neil Greenberg (@ngreenberg) February 20, 2015
The NHL partnered with German software company SAP (sponsor of the San Jose Sharks’ arena) to develop the new “enhanced” (that’s the NHL’s buzzword, apparently winning out over “advanced” and “fancy”) stats pages.
Today is a big day for many people who have been fighting for mainstream acceptance for years. At long last, the NHL has acknowledged and embraced the importance of advanced stats. However, the execution leaves much to be desired. For the time being, stats-inclined fans will be better off sticking to War on Ice and naturalstattrick.com.
