Wednesday, January 10, 2007

 

Fun With Spreadsheets

aka, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About 5-on-3s, But Didn't Know Where To Ask

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but as it happens, JavaGeek (the Hockey Numbers guy) had done some work on 5-on-3 situations. His table -- which I can't certify, but smells right -- is here, the magic numbers (for me) being the actual amount of time teams spent in 5-on-3 situations in the 2005/06 season.

I took that data (btw, thanks Chris) and the Team TOI by Situation I got from mc79hockey in the summer (btw, thanks Tyler), and went about assessing what kind of impact 2-man advantages had, how common they were, etc.

First, some figures, most of which are straight off of JavaGeek's table:
Times. There was a total of about 1100mins of 5-on-3 time, or about 5.2% of total PP time. Put another way, the mythical average NHL game broke down like this:
Scoring. This is what I was really interested in.
The first two columns are rates per 60 minutes, the 3rd is the difference between the two, and the 4th is the sum. 5-on-3s account for 5.2% of all PP time, and 13.9% of all PP goals.

Clearly the advantage conferred by a 2-man advantage is a massive one, but I'm actually surprised at how small the effect is on the overall PP figures (as always, your mileage may vary). It's good to finally know that the average mark for 5-on-3 scoring is about 1 goal every 3 minutes. Also, congrats to the Leafs: that "0.05GAA" is entirely due to the only 3-on-5 goal scored the entire season, by Mike Richards (IIRC) against Toronto.

For Gary Bettman fans, I think the 4th column is the most interesting one. Relative to ES, putting a team on the PP increases the chance that a goal will be scored by 35%; putting a team on a 2-man PP increases the chance that a goal will be scored by 273%. Hypothetical: if you ran the NHL and wanted to see Total Scoring increase, would you be able to use this information effectively?

If there's anything else you want to know about this, drop questions in the Comments. My head hurts a bit from the spreadsheet, so I may have forgotten to put all of the relevant (or interesting) data in the post.

Comments:

So whenever you hear broadcaster's mention the importance of Special Teams because 60%+ of the game is played with one team shorthanded they are just full of it?

It is nice to be able to have done something which no other team was able to do. It is not so nice to know that it is something negative.

Great work.
 


Last season 30% of the game was played on special teams. In '03/04 it was about 23%.
 


Imagine how uncle Gary's goal scoring would look if they allowed and encouraged 5 on 2's. Now there's an idea for the ages!
 


Hypothetical: if you ran the NHL and wanted to see Total Scoring increase, would you be able to use this information effectively?

Not exactly related, but close enough: go back to the way it used to be, and have a team penalized for the entire two minutes, regardless of whether a PP goal is scored.
 


Beautiful work Matt.
 


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