RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

[fr. joe]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Am looking forward to catching one, if not both games this weekend. Defending national champion Yale (what a mouthful!) and Brown (playoff wizards) are in town... and they both happen to be ahead of us in the standings.
Let's do something about that.

 

[DrDemento]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Did I miss anything?

Let's see-Red Cloud is no longer posting anything sarcastic. Ralph has posted the wrong statistics a couple times. I have only posted things directly related to current RPI hockey games. FreshFish has not posted anything punny. And Flagdude has decided to only post positive things about the team and our coach. Or---maybe not.

 

[DrDemento]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

I'm probably alone in thinking this, but two things about our PP ( other than its lousy ...again )
1) I HATE the 5 forward concept...it's ineffective and usually results in short handed chances against ( hello , SLU )
2) I love seeing the BRO down low on the offensive end ...he looks at ease handling the puck and occupies a zip code of real estate for defenders. I want more of this ****it!!!

Agree to all of this. I have posted before about hating the 5 forward PP concept. I too would think Luke C would make one heck of a screen in front of a goalie at any time, not just on the man advantages-i would like to get him there even at the end of the game when we desperately pull our goalie and need to keep the puck in the offensive zone. I just cannot see many opponents being able to move him out of the way without taking an obvious penalty.

 

[fr. joe]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Agree to all of this. I have posted before about hating the 5 forward PP concept. I too would think Luke C would make one heck of a screen in front of a goalie at any time, not just on the man advantages-i would like to get him there even at the end of the game when we desperately pull our goalie and need to keep the puck in the offensive zone. I just cannot see many opponents being able to move him out of the way without taking an obvious penalty.

I like that thinking, too. The BRO is a load in the best sense of the word.

That E. Stewart Jones Power Play thing? The locals all know that ESJ is a noted defense attorney. Can't anyone convince him to sponsor the Penalty Kill?

 

[Wicked Slappaahs]

I had some password expiration problems back in December. After a note or two to uscho admin and no response, I just fell out of practice. I would drop in from time to time and saw that it was becoming more hockey and less drivel... so it was time to get back in. Reregistration got me out of password purgatory.
Did I miss anything?

Padre, if you were in purgatory, the rest of us are in a world of trouble ! Glad you're back. No you didn't miss much , everything here is sweetness and honey ....ha ha

 

[Ralph Baer]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

I had some password expiration problems back in December. After a note or two to uscho admin and no response, I just fell out of practice. I would drop in from time to time and saw that it was becoming more hockey and less drivel... so it was time to get back in. Reregistration got me out of password purgatory.
Did I miss anything?

Welcome back.

 

[DrDemento]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

I like that thinking, too. The BRO is a load in the best sense of the word.

That E. Stewart Jones Power Play thing? The locals all know that ESJ is a noted defense attorney. Can't anyone convince him to sponsor the Penalty Kill?

Or at least get it reduced to Manslaughter? And plead self defense?

 

[REDRocket]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Let's see-Red Cloud is no longer posting anything sarcastic. Ralph has posted the wrong statistics a couple times. I have only posted things directly related to current RPI hockey games. FreshFish has not posted anything punny. And Flagdude has decided to only post positive things about the team and our coach. Or---maybe not.

...and Clarkson still sucks. <-Inarguable.

 

[jmhusker]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Not sure how anyone else feels about this-but I would certainly like boxscores to list how many actual minutes of man advantage time a team has during a game. Not simply each team had 4 penalties for 8 minutes total. I would like to know how much of that time actually was man advantage and not overlapping. Additionally I would like to know the power play goals scored per minutes of actual power play time(a 5 minute major should be different from a 2 minute penalty). As of now in box scores, when a team has had 2 majors and 2 minors and the opposition has scored 1 goal-it is listed as power play success 1 out of 4(i would prefer that to read 1 out of 14 minutes). Not all power play opportunites are the same and i just wish there was a simple listing to indicate a bit more about them. Just ruminating a bit today as the weather has been depressing as heck here in NJ.

I agree with you on this Doc. I've always thought a better measure of PP success would be the average length of time per single man advantage it takes for a team to score a PP goal. Alternately, a teams PP conversion rate could be listed as the probability of scoring in 2 minutes of +1 man time. These are two ways of saying the same thing but both of them are better than the current system where one goal in a major penalty counts the same as one goal in minor penalty many of which aren't even 2 minutes long.

It also stands to reason that a heavily penalized team's PP percentage understates their PP effectiveness relative to a lightly penalized team. I guess it comes down to whether you are trying to predict whether a team will score in the next 2 minutes or whether it will score on a 2 minute long PP. I prefer the latter measure.

 

[burgie12]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

... the current system where one goal in a major penalty counts the same as one goal in minor penalty many of which aren't even 2 minutes long.

Minor quibble. If you score once while your opponent is serving a major, that gets recorded as 1-for-2 on the PP stats.

 

[Ralph Baer]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

I agree with you on this Doc. I've always thought a better measure of PP success would be the average length of time per single man advantage it takes for a team to score a PP goal. Alternately, a teams PP conversion rate could be listed as the probability of scoring in 2 minutes of +1 man time. These are two ways of saying the same thing but both of them are better than the current system where one goal in a major penalty counts the same as one goal in minor penalty many of which aren't even 2 minutes long.

It also stands to reason that a heavily penalized team's PP percentage understates their PP effectiveness relative to a lightly penalized team. I guess it comes down to whether you are trying to predict whether a team will score in the next 2 minutes or whether it will score on a 2 minute long PP. I prefer the latter measure.

One goal in a minor penalty counts as 1 for 1, while one in a major counts as 1 for 2. Besides for that, I agree.



Edit: I typed too slowly.

 

[jmhusker]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Really? That's news to me! Even if true the math is still wrong.

 

[burgie12]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Really? That's news to me! Even if true the math is still wrong.

Since you're still on the powerplay after a goal during a major, you're given another "powerplay opportunity" which is why it's considered 1-for-2. If you score three goals on a major, it's considered 3-for-4. If an opponent has a major called against them that results in a power play (ie not matching majors), it's impossible to have a 100% conversion rate.

All that aside, I agree with your point that goals / 2 min of man advantage would be a much more useful stat than PP%. But, how do you take into account taking a penalty while you're on a power play. In that case, you wasted the remaining power play time not by scoring, but by taking a penalty. Would that still reduce the divisor? That's accurate, but then it no longer properly represents the advantage you were originally given. What about 5-on-3 time? Does that count as 2 * 5-on-4 time? These are considerations that are not easily solved.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Since you're still on the powerplay after a goal during a major, you're given another "powerplay opportunity" which is why it's considered 1-for-2. If you score three goals on a major, it's considered 3-for-4. If an opponent has a major called against them that results in a power play (ie not matching majors), it's impossible to have a 100% conversion rate.

All that aside, I agree with your point that goals / 2 min of man advantage would be a much more useful stat than PP%. But, how do you take into account taking a penalty while you're on a power play. In that case, you wasted the remaining power play time not by scoring, but by taking a penalty. Would that still reduce the divisor? That's accurate, but then it no longer properly represents the advantage you were originally given. What about 5-on-3 time? Does that count as 2 * 5-on-4 time? These are considerations that are not easily solved.

DrD's original idea was pretty simple, and it would produce a very useful metric. You take the total amount of time during which you have a one-man advantage, and then see how many times you score during that time period, and produce a number. That is simple and clear and provides useful information.

While not explicitly discussed, one infers that you'd have a separate metric for the amount of time during which you have a two-man advantage.

The converse would be you take the total amount of time during which you are one man down, and see how many goals are scored against you during that time period.

Either you are measuring how long it takes you to score a goal on the power play (or give up a goal on the penalty kill); or you are measuring how many goals you score (concede) during a fixed time period, depending on how you arrange the numerator and denominator. Probably more useful to standardize to see how many goals scored/conceded per two minutes of one-man advantage (two-man tracked separately if you want).

I think it's a great idea and allows for better information and better comparisons too.

 

[burgie12]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Say there's two teams. Team A and Team B.

Team A is playing Team C, gets a powerplay in the first and scores 29 seconds into the power play. They then proceed to get three more power plays throughout the game and thirty seconds after each one, commit a penalty of their own. Total power play chances: 4. Total time with a man advantage: 1:59.

Team B plays Team C the next night. Team C only has one penalty called against them all night. B scores with one second left on the power play. Total power play chances: 1. Total time with a man advantage: 1:59.

Who was the more effective team on the power play? A or B?

 

[Ralph Baer]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

JL is out http://www.troyrecord.com/sports/20140206/rpi-literally-ready-to-freakout-this-weekend.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Who was the more effective team on the power play? A or B?

You are confounding two distinctly different questions. "Effective" to me suggests a multi-variate metric, not a one-dimensional one. By one possible metric, the two power plays you described would result in an equivalent number.

Look more closely in the way you described your question: Team A actually had four power plays, each one of them thirty seconds long. They scored on one of them. Team B had one power play, two minutes long, and scored on it.

By this metric, Team B scored a goal on 100% of its power play chances while Team A scored a goal on 25% of its power play chances. This is a different metric.

It's not that one is right and the other is wrong, it is that they are complementary.

Let's call "goals scored per two minutes of man-advantage" the "efficiency" metric. Let's call "number of times scoring per power play" the "conversion rate" metric.

You tell me:
Team A had an efficiency rating of 1 goal / 2 minutes, and a conversion rate of 25%.
Team B had an efficiency rating of 1 goal / 2 minutes, and a conversion rate of 100%.
Which is more "effective"?

My answer would be that a one-game sample is too small a data set from which to generalize. I think it would be quite interesting to observe how these two different metrics played out over the course of a season.



As you so astutely pointed out, if there is a significant variance between the two metrics over time, it would clearly be an indicator that the team either (a) committed a lot of penalties during the power play, or (b) was able to draw quite a few additional penalties during the power play, leading to 5 on 3.

 

[turk181]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

ECAC audio interview with Higgsy.... http://static.psbin.com/2/q/n2gu54ynj42w84/Brock_Higgs.MP3

 

[DeepRed72]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Since you're still on the powerplay after a goal during a major, you're given another "powerplay opportunity" which is why it's considered 1-for-2. If you score three goals on a major, it's considered 3-for-4. If an opponent has a major called against them that results in a power play (ie not matching majors), it's impossible to have a 100% conversion rate.

All that aside, I agree with your point that goals / 2 min of man advantage would be a much more useful stat than PP%. But, how do you take into account taking a penalty while you're on a power play. In that case, you wasted the remaining power play time not by scoring, but by taking a penalty. Would that still reduce the divisor? That's accurate, but then it no longer properly represents the advantage you were originally given. What about 5-on-3 time? Does that count as 2 * 5-on-4 time? These are considerations that are not easily solved.

There are two other considerations that might be taken into account. 1) The shorties you give up should be subtracted from your goal count and 2) any goals that you score in the few seconds after the PP expires when the opponent's penalized man has not gotten back into the play should be considered in the calculation . . . maybe?

 

[jmhusker]

Re: RPI 2013/14 Part III: Maximum Overdrivel

Say there's two teams. Team A and Team B.

Team A is playing Team C, gets a powerplay in the first and scores 29 seconds into the power play. They then proceed to get three more power plays throughout the game and thirty seconds after each one, commit a penalty of their own. Total power play chances: 4. Total time with a man advantage: 1:59.

Team B plays Team C the next night. Team C only has one penalty called against them all night. B scores with one second left on the power play. Total power play chances: 1. Total time with a man advantage: 1:59.

Who was the more effective team on the power play? A or B?

They are equivalent in my book although one could argue that the team that had 4 chances in the 1:59 is marginally better. How? 4 face-offs to one. Just for argument sake... let's assume it takes about 2 seconds to win a face-off and take a shot. Team B only had 2 seconds of time on the PP when it was pretty much impossible to score. Team C had a total of about 8 seconds. So C is better. And if you consider that teams don't usually look to set up an immediate one timer off of face-offs on the PP, preferring to set something up, the dead time when you wouldn't expect to see goals is probably quite a bit longer - more like 10 seconds. That means that team C is actually more than just marginally better. Interesting to think about.