THE PASSING PROJECT
THE PASSING PROJECT
(Jan 2014)
As we use shot attempts as a proxy for possession, so too can we use passing attempts and completions for the same purpose.
It also identifies where players spend most of their time on the ice (i.e. a heat map of sorts).
PASSING, SHOT GENERATION, WINNING
(March 2014)
if a team wins the larger percentage of any of the passing and/or shot-generation stats I’ve created, how might they affect a team’s chances at winning?
winning the neutral zone possession battle carried more importance than winning the overall possession battle.
the team that finished with a better S/SAG% won each of the ten games. Here’s why I think that makes sense.
It’s better to score off a pass—you’re giving the goalie less time to set up for a shot. This is nothing new to fans of hockey and certainly to the players. But, we’ve never had a stat to represent it until now. S/SAG% is a way to measure the quality of a team’s shot attempts.
The winning team in all ten games has had an average S/SAG% of 54.7% and the losing team has averaged 43.2%. This 11.5% difference was the largest between the fourteen stat categories.
PASSING AND GOALS
(Dec 2014)
Today, I wanted to offer an early answer on the relationship, if any, between passing (shot generation) efficiency and how many goals a team scores.
What we see is a strong correlation (R2 = .883) between a team’s 5v5 SAGE and the number of goals they score at 5v5 play.
There is nearly a perfect correlation between how efficient they are passing the puck and how many goals they score during 5v5 situations.
This project is all about finding value in phases of the game and parsing out the noise that exists in Corsi, Fenwick, or even shot totals. How teams generate offense is more important than simply the amount of offense they generate.
PASSING, SH%, AND CLOSE SITUATIONS
(Dec 2014)
Teams are more likely to score a goal from a shot that is the result of a pass versus one that is created in another fashion.
For every team we’re tracking data on, teams are consistently shooting at a higher percentage from successful primary passes.
There is a second reason why SAGE may correlate strongly with the number of goals a team scores: how often teams win.
The two metrics most Closely associated with teams winning are the same: SAGE during all 5v5 situations and SAGE during close situations.
PASSING PROJECT DATA RELEASE
The ability for an individual player to attempt a shot or generate one for a teammate is one deriving from skill and we can trust it as a means of evaluation going forward.
The important takeaway in this first post is this: if generating attempts via passes is just as reliable as a player’s own shot attempts in terms of repeatability, then it needs to be a part of how we evaluate players and how they contribute to offense.
If you want to forecast a player’s primary point totals over the second half of the season, you should look at the rate at which they generate shot attempts from the first half of the season rather than their individual shot attempt rate.
We can use a forward’s offensive zone secondary passes leading to shot attempts as a metric that helps quantify these talking points of “keeping plays alive” and “loose puck recoveries.” You can also think of this as sustaining offensive pressure.
TRACKING PASSING PLAYS
Passing is an absolutely vital individual and team skill. It is arguably the largest factor in game “flow” (tempo, puck control), an integral key to many modern puck-moving systems, and, as you’ll see here, impactful on scoring success.
teams shot at 7.2% without passes and at 8.0% with passes.
This margin increases significantly when we look at shots generated from multiple passes – that is, a team completes at least two passes prior to a teammate taking a shot – the shooting percentage stands at 9.6%.
THE PASSING PROJECT REVISITED
(Jan 2021)
Some of it is very intuitive, like how a shot preceded by one pass alone has a small, but positive impact on a team’s shooting percentage (7.2% on unassisted shots to 8% with one assist). That number jumps to 9.6% when another pass is added to the sequence, which bridges the gap a little between expected goals & actual goals.
Through his work, we also know that passes from behind the net lead to goals at a higher rate than other passing plays, most notably shots from the point (which are the lowest of low percentage shots).
Teams scored on 8% of their 5v5 shots on goal without a passing play. This is including rebound chances. If we exclude rebounds from this sample, that shooting percentage drops to only 4.1% out of all shots on goal.
All other unassisted shots had a shooting percentage of 5.6% or less, which goes to show the impact of just one pass. Yes, it’s only 3% but think of how many shots teams take in a year.
teams shot at 12.6% when they completed three passes before a shot on goal.
Going strictly from a percentage standpoint, the easiest way to boost your team’s goal total is to generate more passes from behind the net or create a cross-seam play to get the goaltender moving.
The interesting part is how rare those plays are, as they account for only 13.2% of all shots.
So few shots coming from plays behind the net is a little weird, though. If only because it’s easier to setup your offense from there or get a lucky bounce off a skate instead of trying to force feed a cross-rink pass through various layers of defense
Plays that happen in transition (stretch passes & passes from defensive or neutral zones) are low-percentage plays. A shot off a stretch pass is about as effective as a normal give-and-go pass and plays from the neutral zone don’t result in many goals either.
The better quality transition plays aren’t going to happen if the primary assist comes from outside the offensive zone.
If there is anything that stood out to me, it’s how often teams still revert to point shots for offense. Over 22% of all primary shot assists were low-to-high plays, which are essentially point shots that have roughly a 2% chance of resulting in a goal.
Deflections & rebounds have the highest conversion rate out of all 5v5 shots tracked, shots that are deflected having a 29.9 shooting percentage and rebounds having a 23.4 shooting percentage respectively.
We know that passing is important, point shots are bad and the easiest way to boost your team’s offense is generating passes from behind the net or across the slot. However, those plays are still very rare in nature, so only a handful of those passes per game are actually completed, which limits the overall impact.
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