Goal Impact Analysis
by ECUCanesFan on Sep 8, 2010 10:35 AM EDT
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PrintSo I've been thinking about doing this for a while now, and figured I should come here for some ideas and help. I want to do an analysis of the actual impact of every goal scored by the canes this year. I first got this idea reading a few things on here over the summer where some people believed that Staal never scores "important" goals, and bunches up his goals during blowouts and things of that nature.
I hope that by the end of the season, this will provide some level of insight, or at least some interesting knowledge about who scores for the canes in clutch situations.
Now this is where you come in.
Bear with me for a bit, this idea is a bit crazy and very rough around the edges. I have the general idea that I want to assign a point value to certain kinds of goals. For example, the first goal of the game would be worth 2.5 points because it is arguably the most important goal of the game, and an empty net goal with less than 10 seconds left would not count at all. An empty net goal with more than 10 seconds left with just a 1 goal lead could be worth 1 point for essentially clinching the game. All of these numbers are subject to change, and this is where I'd like some input from others.
Some other ideas I have are thus: A goal scored when the the previous score was either tied or separated by 1 goal (a 2-1 lead, trailing 4-3, a 2-2 tie) would be worth 2 points.
A goal scored when there is a 2-goal differential would be worth 1.5 points (to avoid the issue with decimals making things complicated, I could always just multiply everything's value by a factor of 2 if you guys think its necessary.)
A goal scored when there is a >3-goal differential would be worth 1 point. After all, cutting a 4-1 lead to a 4-2 deficit isn't as important as the goals that would make it 4-3 or even tie it at 4. I understand that sometimes the first goal of the comeback is the catalyst that starts the team, but I don't want to make this judging subjective. Also, if a goal is scored to cut the lead from 4-1 to 4-2, it only becomes important AFTER the fact, if the team responds and DOES successfully come back.
Another thing that I am considering doing for this is using a 1.5x multiplier for all goals scored in the 3rd period or overtime (excluding empty net goals). The rationale being that a goal to break a 1-1 tie in the 3rd period has more impact than the tiebreaking goal being scored in the 1st period.
An overtime goal would be worth the regular 2 points for breaking a tie plus the 1.5x multiplier for scoring in overtime, making it worth a total of 3 points.
Something interesting here, I would like to count shootout goals towards this total also, even though the NHL pretends they only exist in their own category. A shootout goal counting for 1.5 points (1 point plus 1.5x multiplier).
Something that would NOT be awarded extra points in this system would be game winning goals. I don't like the emphasis put on game winning goals, because they often are a totally useless and random stat. Certainly players who score more will have more GWGs, but they very rarely are actually the "winning" goals of the game. They occur in the 1st period, middle of the 2nd period, and all over during the course of the season. Also, in the heat of the game, the impact that the goal actually has on the game has nothing to do with the fact that it was the eventual game winner.
Sigh, I know this was a lot and I commend anybody who actually read the whole thing. Any constructive feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated. I am going to be keeping track of this once the season starts and I will provide updates throughout the year if people are interested.
Thank you for your time!
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I just skimmed through your write up so if I missed it sorry: You have to assign some value to goals scored in the 1st minute and last minute of every period these are momentum changers, especially in the last minute of periods. Another momentum changer is getting scored on less than a minute after scoring.
ahh yes, good point. i could potentially add the 1.5x multiplier to goals scored in the first/last minute of periods. Not sure yet how/if that would stack with the regular 3rd period bonus, but I’ll think about that more later. The multiplier could also be in effect for “answer” goals, like you suggested, scoring a goal <1 minute after the opponent just scored on you, those are definitely important goals.
I’m not sure where, but I’ve seen a breakdown of score differential when goals where scored. I think it’s on ESPN, but I can’t find it right now. Maybe it’s hockeyDB. Why not simply use that? Goals scored when the team is even would be worth something. Goals scored when the team is down 1 are worth more. Goals scored when the team is down 2 are worth less. So on and so forth. It would be less work and less subjective.
As much as I like what you’re trying to do it’s going to vary greatly depending on the weights, which no matter how much input we give, are still going to be subjective. If you want to do something completely objective compare Staal’s goalscoring to that of the other guys on this list. What percent are scored when the team is trailing, tied, ahead? What percent when the team is down 1, up 1, down 2, up by two or more? You could even say goals scored when your team is down by three or up by two are garbage goals.
The good thing about completely objective metrics is that it removes the reviewer from the equation completely. If you do include the reviewer in to the analysis then you open the analysis up to questions of expertise and defending credentials. Since I think you can do something without getting in to defending someone or some groups expertise that’s the method I’d chose. If I find that link to the goal scoring by situation I’ll send it on.
Don't trust me. I have psychological issues.
I vaguely remember seeing what you are talking about, and thats kind of where i got the idea from. I guess I’m just trying to take that kind of thing to the next level and make it a little bit more in depth.
Of course subjectivity isn’t good when doing a study on statistics like this, which is why I would still keep track of all the goals scored in specific categories as raw data that would be completely objective in some kind of spreadsheet. I just thought it would be a fun/interesting twist to try to create a somewhat meaningful equation, albeit a little subjective. And even though it may be subjective, I don’t know what results I may find, so its not like I’m twisting the equation to favor certain players over others. I’m making an equation that I feel fairly accurately represents the impact of a goal being scored at any point in the game, and from there, who knows what results I may get.
Here is another suggestion. Its created for the National Lacrosse League which has four quarters instead of three periods, but the point system would work the same.
http://www.nllinsider.com/2010/01/12/the-money-ballers-week-1/
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by Zachary Zielonka on Sep 8, 2010 11:54 AM EDT reply actions
yeah, i guess thats pretty similar to what i’m going for, im just trying to do it a little more in depth
That’s not a bad stat, and at least it’s the expertise of someone else you’re relying on. So long as you take out the GWG stat you should be okay. You’ll still need to add in some weights though for goals that put a team up by two or goals that get a team to within one. The goal that puts a team up by two can be the most important goal of a game. John and Tripp say it frequently that when one team is up the next goal is a goal of consequence and I couldn’t agree with them more. Going up by two is very important in hockey and rarely gets credited in a stat category.
Don't trust me. I have psychological issues.
Noble effort, ECUCanesFan, but it won’t be easy. This is the kind of analysis where counterexamples rule.
I guess how to measure depends on what purpose you want this measure to serve.
From your comment on the great Staal debate, it sounds as though you want to know if somebody is a “clutch” player who truly plays a decisive role at critical times, or just somebody who scores a lot of goals at random times but often with no particular influence on the outcome of games. The classic unclutch 50-goal NHL scorer. They’re a dime a dozen, aren’t they? Somebody must keep a list of those guys someplace. Let’s see, there’s Staal, and there’s Kovalchuk and Gaborek. There’s a reason they’ve never won a Stanley Cup. It’s their knack for scoring worthless goals. Oh. One of those guys has won a Stanley Cup. Well, he didn’t deserve any of the credit for it, I’m sure.
There are certainly lots of scenarios to complicate what you’re trying to do. For example, suppose the Canes are up 10-1 in the second period. Staal, seeing that the goal won’t matter, seizes the opportunity and pots the 11th goal just to make his critics crazy. Then the other team scores 9 goals in the third period. Staal’s goal is worthless at the time it’s scored because it adds a meaningless goal to a huge lead. But by the end of the game, Staal’s goal is the winning goal. Staal’s critics picket NHL offices to stop them from crediting him with a game winner. Hmm. That seems a bit extreme, but they do have a point based on the circumstances when Staal scored the goal.
Does the sequence in which the goal is scored matter? Mathematically, as a contribution to the total, it doesn’t. In that sense, in an 11-10 win, each goal should get an equal rating.
But order does matter in the sense that without the last goal, the Canes don’t win the game. Winning goals clearly matter more when they break a tie at the end of a game and truly decide who wins. They would seem to be worth less, at least as a metric of whether someone is a “clutch” player, if they are scored early and just turn out to be the winner because the team with the lead screws around and allows the other team to catch up.
Shouldn’t one consideration in your valuation of goals be that the importance of goals varies inversely with the number of goals scored? In the extreme case, there’s a single goal and it means everything, regardless of when it’s scored. That’s the all-important goal.
What about a goal with .2 seconds left to break an 11-11 tie? That’s all important in that it decides the outcome and everybody knows it at the time, including the goalie, the defense, and the goal scorer. The goal took a great effort and surmounted a great effort by the other team.
Yet somehow that goal seems cheaper because scoring on the other team’s defense and goalie that night wasn’t that hard. A goal scored with .2 seconds left to break a 0-0 tie, when Ryan Miller has stopped 52 shots and seems unbeatable, would seem to be worth more than the average winning goal. The goal scorer did the impossible against a great goalie who was on his game, and did it at the critical moment.
So you might want to explore issues such as:
1. How cheap or dear were goals that night? The fewer scored, the more valuable.
2. Should you factor in the opposition goalie’s save percentage?
3. How close was the game? If it’s close, a goal is worth more. (But I think the goal count still reduces the value of each goal somehow. Goals in an 11-11 mutual blowout don’t seem as valuable as goals in a 1-1 defensive struggle.)
4. The timing issue is a two-edged sword. The later a goal is scored in a blow out, the less it seems the goal should be worth. The later a goal is scored in a close game, the more it seems the goal should be worth.
5. How important is the game? There’s the 7th game of the Cup series, and then there’s the case when both teams are out of the playoff race. In the latter case, the primary function of goals is to devalue draft choices. That late great Canes’ rally was fun, but in objective terms, every goal hurt the Canes. Should McBain’s overtime goal count the same as the goal with .2 seconds left that won a playoff game?
What you’re attempting is a fascinating challenge, but don’t expect anyone to agree with you, even if you submit a formal mathematical proof countersigned by a savant.
first off, thanks for all the input and the thought you put into your response.
as for your first question concerning what exactly i am trying to measure, it is not exactly the ‘clutch’ factor of a player, so much as how much the goal they scored affected the momentum/outcome of that specific game.
as for your first counterexample, the 11th goal while up 10-1, would still be worth 1 point in my current system, so it is not ‘worthless’. yes it turns out to be the GWG by the NHL’s standards, but in all reality, his goal was not influential in the outcome of the game. what WAS influential was the canes building a 10-1 lead and then choking to allow 9 goals in the 3rd.
with the idea to vary the value of a goal inversely with the total number of goals in that game, i do not feel it is necessary to do something like this because i am only looking at the context of these goals on a per-game basis. so (throwing injury aside) every player on the team was in that game and had the same chance to score, and for no reason should the goals count for less. if you score to give your team a 4-3 lead just before the end of the 1st period, then yes the game could continue on to be a 9-8 game, but it could also stop right there and finish 4-3. Giving your team the lead is giving your team the lead, regardless of what the score is.
i guess in my view, there is no difference in a goal with .2 left to break an 11-11 tie and a 0-0 tie. yes it might be more amazing to score that in a 0-0 tie, but the impact on both games is identical: you won your team the game.
1. i’ve gone over, based on looking at the number on a per-game basis, it really doesn’t matter how cheap or dear the goals were, and all players had equal advantages/disadvantages
2. factoring goalies’ save percentages seems like it would be an entirely different project to undertake all together, and would definitely be interesting to look at, but thats not really my goal with this.
3. a goal in an 11-11 game is just as valuable as one in a 1-1 game: that is, if you scored 1 less goal, you lose.
4. I agree with this, but I feel it would make the results a lot more subjective and difficult to gather
5. we all know the importance of a game goes a long way to making a goal more valuable, but again this study looks at the impact on the game over the course of a long season. I would love to give justin williams 100 points if i could for his EN goal in game 7 of the stanley cup finals.
again, thank you for your thoughts and input
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, ECUCF.
I’m not sure you can separate your goal of identifying how much individual players’ goals affected the momentum/outcome of specific games from whether the players are “clutch” players. Aren’t “clutch” players the ones who score more of the kinds of goals you’re looking for? If not, how do you draw the distinction?
I think some of the numbers for different players below suggest that this measure may not be useful for comparing players who don’t play comparable minutes. If you went back to Nick Wallin’s famous playoff goal when he was “the secret weapon,” since that goal was big, shouldn’t he get a very high “points per goal” score even though he almost never scored a goal? If you lead the league in points per goal but almost never score any goals, what exactly does that tell us? Conversely, if you score lots of goals, aren’t you condemned to have a higher percentage of them not be game changers? Points of reference for Staal might be other leading goal scorers.
Another consideration is getting assists on important goals. My impression is that Staal gets a lot of such assists because he works so hard behind the net and puts so many shots on goal. If you used the same formula to assign points for assists and summed those with points for goals, I wonder if that would increase the spread between Staal and Jokinen or close it? I really have no idea, but there’s a reason players get credit for assists as well as goals. The point is to make your team score goals, even if you are not personally the guy who scores the most goals. Think Ron Francis, with 2+ assists per each goal he scored, or Pavel Datsyuk.
Have you looked at Babchuk or McBain yet? I’m interested to see if guys like them, who score fewer goals than Staal and Jokinen, are for some reason more likely to look good on this measure.
by curiouscanesfan on Sep 8, 2010 7:27 PM EDT up reply actions
To start with the last thing you brought up, I’ve also thought about analyzing assists. Unfortunately, the only way I can think to do this would be extremely subjective. Sure I could give credit for all assists the same way I give credit for goals, but I feel like at least 20% of assists earned don’t have ANY direct impact on the goal being scored (a defenseman who passed it to a forward in his own zone being one example) and just a small % of assists on goals (for the canes at least) are worthy of an assist. Plays like the San Jose game where whitney made a great pass to Cullen I believe who scored would be one, as would McBain’s fake shot on the powerplay that acted as a pass to Staal. But most assists just come from passing the puck around in the zone back and forth before a shot is taken. For this reason I have decided not to tackle the assist problem.
I totally agree that my stat would have to be taken with a grain of salt. Obviously quality of goal is NOT the only thing that counts because quantity is also extremely important. But the stat would serve a purpose to compare players of similar goal scoring numbers.
I guess what I meant by my previous ‘clutch’ comment is that the importance of the game doesn’t effect the equation. Also I feel a ‘clutch’ player is weighted more towards the end of games and GWG, whereas in my book, someone scoring the first goal of the game gets a lot of credit also. I would also like to implement the ‘answer’ goal multiplier, like extra for scoring within 1 minute of the other team scoring. I feel those situations aren’t necessarily “clutch” as they are impactful
My advice is to shoot for a grand unified theory in physics – it would be easier.
by curiouscanesfan on Sep 9, 2010 11:10 AM EDT up reply actions
And the goal net is made of string. There’s the connection you need to work everything out – the grand unified theory of physics and hockey.
by curiouscanesfan on Sep 9, 2010 3:33 PM EDT up reply actions
And i too agree
1000% and I’ll ask a whit if question: what if the NHL wre to look at this would th nhlpa go along …not sure why they’s object but hey…hockey players & fans are an odd bunch ya know !!!
a good effort…thank you…
And if it Aint Hockey,It Aint Nothin !!
That Checkers 3rd Sweater ROCKS !!!
The first testing of this formula is in
From last years stats, eric staal would have a score of 53.5 points while Jussi Jokinen came in with 58 points not counting his 4 shootout goals. With 1.5 points per shootout goal, that brings Jussi up to 64 points.
but for now lets throw out the shootout goals
Staal’s point total of 53.5/29goals =1.8448 points/goal
Jussi’s point total of 58.0/30goals = 1.9333 points/goal
Staal bashing disclaimer: I’m not by any means trying to say that jussi jokinen is better than eric staal, merely conveying results of this random equation to compute impact/goal
I don’t think it’s smart to arbitrarily give point values. You’d have to do some statistics on the average value of a goal in a given situation. Why not just keep track of when the goals are scored, at what time, and how much you think momentum shifted?
By the way, Timeonice tracks Corsi for close games, trailing, and leading scores too, if you put that in the script. That could be helpful.
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