Sunday, April 28, 2013

Toronto Maple Leafs Players Pace Over a Full Season



Now that the regular season for the Toronto Maple Leafs is over, I thought it would be interesting to calculate what sort of totals these players were on pace for over the course of a full season.  The math was easy, but I should note that I added 34 games (as thats the amount of games missed due to the lockout this year) to the total games played that the players already had.  For example, if a player such as Phil Kessel played 48 games this season I went off the assumption that he would have played 82 games.  If a player such as Matt Frattin only played 25 games I went off the assumption that he would have played 59 games.  I did this to account for games lost to injury/being a healthy scratch that already occurred in this shortened season, and I think it adds an added degree of realism to some of the numbers.  Also, and this is fairly straightforward, for the ATOI category I just took the ATOI that the player already had this season.  Lastly I should note that, much like my last post, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt (given the extended sample size and regression that can occur over an 82 game season which tends to tinker with pace).  Nonetheless, a lot of these numbers translate pretty fairly with a player's career numbers or projected potential and seem pretty realistic.  But again, they shouldn't be taken too seriously.  Enjoy.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Chances of Making the Playoffs After 82 Games if You Were in it After 48 Games in the NHL



Now that all sixteen berths in the 2013 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs have been clinched, I think now is an appropriate time to introduce some research I did earlier in the year.

Basically, I wanted to know how often a team that sat in a playoff spot after 48 games also sat in a playoff spot after 82 games.  What I did to try and determine this is go back over the last four seasons (excluding this one) to see where a team sat in the standings after 48 games, and compared that to where they sat after 82 games as well.  A fair criticism of this study would be to say that in an 82 game season, not every team reaches 48 games played at the same time.  This leads to some variability, in that while one team may be playing their 48th game they may be playing a team in their 50th game, which clouds the accuracy of how many points a team would really have if they all finished with 48 games at the same time.  I am not denying this at all.  That is a just criticism of this research.  However, generally speaking, what I'm about to show you serves more as a rough benchmark as to where teams sat after 48 games in previous years.  I would also point out that the 2 or 3 point difference for some teams that may occur given the variability in games played would not be the difference between making and missing the playoffs for most teams.