POINTS VS SCORING RATES
I took a look to see whether or not points/goals had any repeatability. It certainly doesn’t seem too.
offensive numbers drive salaries in the NHL.
If goals scored was what you cared about, you’d do as well picking guys who had above average on ice shooting percentages on the basis of their on-ice GF as you would their points.
USING GOAL DIFFERENTIAL TO PREDICT THE FUTURE
every team has a past, and that past matters. Sure, teams change in the off-season but there’s a lot of continuity too, which means that, even when we confine ourselves to a simple thing like the previous season’s goal differential, we can get a pretty decent idea of what can be reasonably expected in the year to come
74% of teams will have a change of less than 40 goal differential from the season before and teams are just as likely to crater (13%) as they are to flourish (13%).
Over half of the teams will see a change of 20 goal differential or more and we can expect about a quarter of the league’s teams to have a shift of 40 or more. Half of that is in the wrong direction, but that still leaves three or four teams taking a leap forward each and every season, providing hope for next year to everyone else in the process.
I was surprised to find that there was no consistent pattern in this group.
Some teams that look like they’re taking a big step forward aren’t able to sustain that improvement, and others regress badly.
HOCKEY MARCELS - PROJECTING SCORING RATES
How far back should we look when estimating a forward's future point production?
Any stat is a mixture of skill and luck.
How far back we look depends on that balance.
The advantage of broadening the sample is that the luck portion washes out more. The more games you average together, the less likely it is that your sample covers some random hot streak or injury.
The advantage of focusing on the most recent past is that the skill portion will be most like what the player will have going for him tomorrow.
For points per minute, the best fit in my weighting system is 100-65-50-30, which is very similar to what we previously came up with for save percentage.
For both shooters and goalies, the variability of shooting percentage makes it important to look at more than one year when trying to project going forwards, but changes of skill make the most recent year the most important one.
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