So after a very long and productive day spent between Pittsburgh and Erie I have finally found the time to use a keyboard and share my thoughts.
Connor McDavid. A rare guy who gets all the attention and may actually be under-hyped. It reminds me of Lebron James. Lebron was all the basketball world would talk about when he was in prep school and then when he actually played in the NBA he surpassed expectations. It remains to be seen if McDavid can do the same but there was nothing on display Saturday night in Erie's 8-1 drubbing of Saginaw that showed me otherwise.
His skating jump reminds me of Sid, just a powder keg explosion on the first three strides and he is gone. Much like Sid he has full control of the puck and his body when moving at mach speeds. His vision is 360 degrees, he has hands for days, and he is strong on the puck. These poor kids that are trying to play against him don't have a chance.
His speed drove defenders back on their heels which widened their gap control. McDavid's cut back move on his off wing is as strong as it is precise. He also has an amazing knack of either coasting out of his cutback move if nobody steps up or exploding out of it. His passing is of the highest level so if you step up he dishes it on another player's tape, or he continues to take valuable real estate in the home plate area.
He reminded me of Lemieux in the way he floated (not meant as a negative connotation) around the ice like a shark ready to strike its prey. He smartly found soft spots on the breakout while conserving energy. When it was time to go, you better not have blinked, because he was gone. Not a shift goes by where he isn't noticeable. Sure he cheated a little bit on the offensive side of the puck most of the night but it probably had more to do with the fact he could, because if he got caught he would catch up in no time. He was great at sneaking behind players in the defensive zone and pulling a Datsyuk-like stick lift to steal pucks. By being able to cover ground so quickly and effectively It allowed him the ability to cheat and gain more offensive freedom. The risk was low, the reward was high.
Since Sid is the standard for the post lockout superstar #1 draft pick I'll say this: Connor McDavid has a chance to be as good or better.
He has the same skating prowess and he is a little bit taller while having a little bit longer reach. We have a long way to go before knowing the answer to the question on if he can be better than the sport's current best player. One of the reasons Sidney Crosby is the best is because he is the most consistently awesome player in the world. He is also a bulldog in the dirty areas. The thing I am most interested in is seeing how McDavid engages in the defensive zone when he doesn't have the luxury of "cheating" on that offensive side of the puck.
He will be a superstar, there is really no doubt about it, will he be THE superstar? That will be fun to watch unfold.
Another player worthy of mentioning was Dylan Strome. He was previously on the McDavid line earlier in the season but the Otters coaches have since let him take over his own unit. Good decision for both player and team. He was really good, reminded me of Nicklas Backstrom. By getting off the McDavid line and shining on his own line he can shake the perception that he was carried by McDavid. Now the Otters have two lines that control a majority of the play. The Otters are 15-0-0-1 on the year and you can see why with their top two scoring lines.
OK. Onto the 2014 the
War On Ice Pittsburgh Analytics Conference. It was great. There were many great presentations and the questions at the end of each presentation were just as good. A big thank you is in order to
Andrew Thomas and
Sam Ventura for putting this event on.
For those that are interested in this side of the game you should make an effort to attend if they do indeed put together another one of these events. It is worth the time and effort. You had a full lecture hall of really great people that just want to try and better the understanding of how hockey works.
Here is the live feed from yesterday. Yes it is a long video, but all the presentations are here.
Here is the list of the people who presented a topic and what they covered if you want to try and skip to a certain section of the video.
Some highlights for me.
James Santelli discussed the importance of the implementation of advanced metrics within an organization. He stressed the value of communication between the front office, their analytics department, and their coaching staff. Better communication between these three parts of an organization will lead to better on ice results. He mentioned that baseball struggled in its early days with the implementation of advanced metrics and communication was at the forefront for the delay. It is one thing to hire a Tyler Dellow type, it is completely another thing to have the front office on the same page with him as well as the coaching staff. Hiring analytics people isn't useful unless properly implemented. James spoke on how the Pirates have a liaison that works within the organization who helps with the communication between all the different factions on the team.
It seems to be working because James wrote an award winning piece about defensive shifts in baseball and how the Pirates are one of the best teams at it. James was the recipient of the 2014 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award for his article "
Pirates Defensive Shifts: The Hidden Secret Behind Baseball's Best Team".
Matt Cane of
puckplusplus.com had a presentation about shot location data and how it can be used to track where shots are being taken against certain defenders. The interesting Penguins related information that came from his presentation was that when Brooks Orpik was on the ice 56% of all shot attempts came from his side. Paul Martin on the other hand was only responsible for 46% of the shot attempts while he was on the ice. Orpik's numbers were the worst on the team, Martin's were the best. Good luck with that Washington. Cane also showed how players who are shooting from their off wing had a higher shooting percentage (9.9%) than those shooting from their strong sided wing (8.6%). This is not a ground breaking discovery but it now has objective data to scientifically back up what we see on the ice. Any time you have objective data it is better than only having subjective data.
War On Ice Co-founder
Sam Ventura introduced a brand new metric called ZTT (Zone Transitional Time). The intent of this metric is to figure out how long certain players take to transition out of the defensive zone and into the offensive zone. It is setup kind of like a player usage chart where it is broken up into four sections . Here is the team version of the chart.
Sam also had a chart from this season that had individual players on the chart. To put this information into perspective Rob Scuderi was rated very positively. From what I gather ZTT is not about a player's effectiveness as much as it is about their style of play. ZTT measures the amount of time it takes a player to transition, not their effectiveness. Since Rob Scuderi treats the puck like a live grenade, he usually fires the puck up and out of the zone. While the transiation is fast, it is not effective. Sam is working on a way to tie in effectiveness along with the timing portion of this metric.
Another example would be a Dan Bylsma coached team having a fast defense to offense transition because of the long stretch passes and Mike Johnston having a slower one because the Penguins take their time setting things up so they can attack neutral zone with speed. Once again, the metric as currently constructed is just about the time aspect, not the effectiveness.
You can use this metric to kind of gauge what each team's style of play is. It's a cool new metric and I look forward to it's evolution.
There aren't many rooms that
Stephen Burtch will walk into and not be one of the smartest people in it, if not the smartest person in it. Stephen is the lead analytics writer for Sportsnet. His presentation on Delta Corsi (dCorsi) could be considered the doctorate level of advanced hockey statistics. He was kind enough to speak with me and offer me some of his data. I will admit dCorsi is still above my pay grade and I need more work with it before I can responsibly try to utilize it. In a nutshell dCorsi represents the residual (differential) between a player’s Observed Corsi and their Expected Corsi resulting from the discussed regression. It is high end complicated stuff and has the potential to be a very telling an useful metric.
For you fighting fans there was a presentation by
Joe Walsh that dealt with fighting analytics (3:18:06 in the video above).
Jen Lute Costello of Puck Daddy presented the importance of shot suppression and its impact on a team's ability to make the playoffs. The only bad shot suppression team to make the Stanley Cup Final since the data was collected? The 2007-08 Penguins. It really shows how great of a run Marc-Andre Fleury had during that season. On the flip side it also showed how bad he was when the Penguins had some really good shot suppressing teams in the coming years under Bylsma. I still think it was a divine miracle that the Penguins defeated the Red Wings in 2009. Both the 2007-08 and 2008-09 Red Wings were the best two teams on the chart she had. They were phenomenal.
It was so nice to finally be back in Pittsburgh. The city is beautiful and the people are better. Special thanks to
Adam Gretz,
Mike Asti,
Sean Gentille ,
James Santelli,
Stephen Burtch, and
Jen Lute Costello for their kind hospitality and approachability. Thank you to
Jesse Marshall for the shout out during his presentation.
Hopefully next time I can stay longer and take part in the meet and greets.
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Rumor has it the Penguins had a game last night and dusted the Sabres while Sid had 5 points. Sounds good to me.
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Funny story about my arrival in Pittsburgh yesterday that will make sense to Pittsburgh natives. As soon as I hit the city limits from I279 my GPS died (I have a dumb phone). I knew I needed Forbes Ave and I saw a sign for it as I was approaching the tunnel. Only problem was I couldn't take a U-turn to access the exit. Through the tunnel I go. Back through the tunnel again on the other side I go. I now take the Forbes Ave exit but as I found out quickly I made the wrong turn. I thought Carnegie Mellon University was downtown for some reason. There was apparently a parade going on so I was detoured multiple times. I hadn't realized that Forbes Ave was an incredibly long road and extended well past the downtown area. A nice officer stationed for the parade pointed me in the general direction and I successful found my way via I376. One positive of this adventure was driving through beautiful downtown and accidentally driving by Consol Energy Center. These kinds of things happen when you don't visit a city for 13 years.
Thanks for reading!
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