Summary[]
Ben and Michael Baumann talk to Grantland lead hockey writer Sean McIndoe about the rise of sabermetric-style analysis in the NHL
Topics[]
- Interview with Sean McIndoe
- NHL analytics
- Hockey media
- Possession and shots on goal
- Data collection
- Fighting and momentum
- Developing a win value metric for hockey
Banter[]
Michael Baumann is serving as a guest host while Sam is away.
Notes[]
- In the past several months a significant amount of the online hockey analytics community has been hired by teams in what is being called the 'summer of analytics'.
- Sean says that baseball has provided a blueprint for how analytics would progress in the game, but he didn't expect it to happen so quickly.
- Sean thinks that more so than baseball, the hockey media has embraced the use of analytics.
- Limited data is currently available for use in hockey analytics, especially for games in the past several decades. Currently much of the information is crowd sourced, but Sean is hopeful that in coming years technology will help streamline this process.
- There has not been any data yet that indicates fights in hockey swing game momentum or provide a team any tangible advantage.
- Some NHL teams have required writers to take down articles on their personal sites after they are hired by the team.
Links[]
- Effectively Wild Episode 537: Sean McIndoe on the NHL's Analytics Awakening
- The NHL's Analytics Awakening by Sean McIndoe
- Down Goes Brown blog by Sean McIndoe