analytics – McKeen's Hockey

Podcast: The Ice Sheet

Gus Katsaros and Ryan Wagman — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 15:04:33 +0000

Ryan and Gus conceptualize over rising above mediocrity and building a roster via a retool or rebuild, with the Vancouver Canucks as a practical example.

Oh .. and we offer a topical Movember story .

Enjoy.

Intro: Stevie Ray Vaughn - Voodoo Chile
Outro: Tea Party - Save Me

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Podcast: The Ice Sheet

Gus Katsaros and Ryan Wagman — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 04:17:38 +0000

It took three episodes, but we finally named the podcast: The Ice Sheet (Artwork pending - maybe?).

Topics in this one include some in depth looks at the Detroit Red Wings, caused by some of the furor over the decision to waive Martin Frk and Teemu Pulkinnen.

We also go into some of the Arizona Coyotes current state of affairs and ....

The curious case of Casey Mittelstadt

Enjoy.

Intro Music: Paul McCartney & Wings - Junior's Farm
Outro Music: Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run

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Kats Krunch – Breaking Systems: Regroup Rope-A-Dope

Gus Katsaros — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 20:28:36 +0000

The data analyst has done the job, performed analysis and the conclusion is in: the team is very good at zone entries.

Now what?

I go over thought experiments with system play, looking for opportunities to incorporate new ideas into contemporary strategy.

This post is one idea born out of the research of the benefits of controlled zone entries in relation to the propensity for generating shots, scoring chances and ultimately, goals.

You’re likely already aware of Corey Sznajder and the All Three Zones Project that tracked zone entries/exits for the entire 2013-14 season. If not, the data was made available here.

Corey will be doing more intricate work for 2015-16 season with a link in his tweet below.

I'm going to be tracking microstats for the upcoming NHL season & I will make the data publicly available. https://t.co/tMrM7BaJTB

— Corey Sznajder (@ShutdownLine) August 20, 2016

ZONE ENTRIES

Volumes has been written espousing the benefits of controlled zone entries for shot generation as opposed to dump and chase, highlighting the importance of control in the neutral zone, work built on most notable Carolina Hurricanes Analyst, Eric Tulsky.

Controlled zone exits are desired to optimize neutral zone use and work less for the controlled entry at the opposition blueline.

We all want to believe in the ideal that teams can exit the zone equally with control every time, but the reality is, there are going to be times where the puck can’t be skated out. This can be caused by one of two reasons:

effective forechecking pressure by opposition hemming a team in the defensive zone
skill level and current on-ice quality of teammates/competition on that particular play

This provides an opportunity to use universal entry/exit philosophy against the users. Dumping the puck out of the zone in desperation or as a last resort is going to happen, likely more often than teams may desire. It’s best to be prepared.

This is the idea behind the Regroup Rope-a-Dope

Rope-A-Dope

For illustration here, the play starts as a puck battle in the defensive zone. The play is detailed in an animation below, with the play on the left side, but this can easily be adapted to work on the other side of the zone.

https://www.mckeenshockey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Regroup-Rope-a-Dope-Final.flv

The battle in the corner carries risk and dumping it out of the zone may become the last resort if there’s no clear play to skate it out with control. For coaches, a dump out is a desirable decision, preferring to have a puck battle in the neutral zone, or anywhere outside the defensive zone.

The puck is sent out into the neutral zone – pucks into the other team’s zone, it should ideally work with a puck sent to the neutral zone with a shallow regroup – playing on the enticement for a quick re-entry.

A good zone entry team can set up just inside the blueline fairly quickly, especially since opposition players will have to clear the zone. This time there’s a little twist. The defending RW enters the neutral zone with the lone responsibility of cutting off the cross ice pass to the weak side defenseman. If possible, cutting off the passing lane to the opposition LW would be a bonus, but it’s not a necessity, since the weak side defenseman would have him as his check.

From above, this won’t even register to anyone looking on, scouts, other team personnel, as a strategical maneuver, and may gloss over it entirely, even though the positioning here is vital to the play.

Regrouping team now has 3 decisions:

retreat deeper into their zone to start a more coordinated entry
- Here a team would default to their normal neutral zone forecheck
dump the puck into the zone and prep for a retrieval
- defending team would be in a better position to get the puck back and begin a controlled exit – despite the same offensive zone pressure.
force a controlled entry

Option 3 is what we are focusing here.

Players on the ice will have to be cognizant of the developing play and in this situation perhaps the RW calls the play after reading the puck retrieving defenseman’s intentions. Do they rope-a-dope or use traditional neutral zone forecheck – that would likely leave holes along the blueline and in my opinion makes the regroup more successful to find an outlet and get back into the zone. Chasing using a NZ forecheck likely forces the defense pairing back into their zone.

Dumping the puck into the zone has one path, either up the strong side where most players are up against the line, or the long route on the other side. Retrieving the dump in should be easier on the defending team, and with the dump in success rate on shot generation diminishing the risk that presented itself during the play in the corner. The likeliest outcome is a more controlled exit from the zone, with speed against the offensive forecheck.

To Rope-a-dope, the defending team wants to provide incentive to localize the play in the rectangle area, with some leeway to keep the regroup shallow, while cutting off the weak side with the winger at about the faceoff circle, ready to cut off a cross ice pass and making the only option a dump in on that side. Giving the defender a quick option (in this case his own RW) along the blueline would be too good to pass up – although the LW in the diagram below should be below the blueline. (note the animation was created using Sportsdood.

This is where defending team hopes the opposition subscribes heavily enough on controlled entry philosophy and looks to force the entry as a first option rather than dumping it in or retreating into their own zone.

By cutting the ice in half, the puck carrying defenseman has limited outlets in the RW, or C. Using the RW along the wall to draw attention from one of the defenders just inside the zone, to open up to the center. He’s immediately engaged and a pincer movement between the LW, C and D engage the puck carrier and force the turnover at the line.

Meanwhile, the RW in the neutral zone seeing the out manned positional battle and reading the rop-a-dope correctly can cheat toward to the opposition blueline and become a quick strike option. At least, they will force the weak side defenseman to retreat in coverage and effectively removes him from the play altogether.

A quick up and the RW is now in alone on a breakaway or at the very least, taking the play into the opposition zone. The benefit is a potential scoring chance after successfully reacquiring the puck at the blueline using the regrouping team’s momentum against them by stifling the forced entry and sending the puck the other way quick.

Should the quick strike availability turn out as a non-option , the abrupt game flow change captures the former offensive team moving in the wrong direction, requiring a quick stop and retreat back, scrambling to get back into defensive posture.

The result is chaos. Defensive zone chaos. A broken system if you will.

There wasn’t any additional risk added than there was during the initial battle to the corner and in the end, elicited situational risk to the regrouping team.

Clearly there are no guarantees, but if there’s a way to use a team’s steadfast willingness to adhere to a philosophy against them, it’s a worthwhile gamble.

Breaking The System

This isn’t a basic strategy or tactic, there’s a lot of moving parts and synchronization required. Complexity makes it difficult to defend against and enticing enough to fall into the trap.

Dumping a puck out of the zone under duress – or as an option – will occur more than teams want, it’s best to use this as an opportunity instead of as a pressure release valve.

Use contemporary zone entry knowledge/philosophy against the regrouping team after a dump out without them realizing they are being manipulated into doing so.

Create a lone option that plays to believe a controlled entry can be achieved.

Use regrouping team’s momentum against them, similar to tipping a person over after they’ve already lost their balance.

At best, a scoring opportunity is created from the turnover and/or defensive zone chaos (breaking a team’s defensive zone system is best achieved by inducing chaos.)

Follow Gus Katsaros on Twitter (@Katshockey)

Podcast: Episode 2

Gus Katsaros and Ryan Wagman — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 02:17:58 +0000

Ryan and I recorded the second episode of the 'Podcast to be named later'.

We delve into such taboo topics right away to establish our own views on a subject that seems to plague so much online content and scouting reports and online fuel for deep ire, intangibles. Do they have a role to play in our player evaluation methods?

We touched on and expanded in detail about online perception when it comes to scouting/analytics and player evaluation methods, fueled by this quote provided by Bob McKenzie that made the rounds online Friday:

“The flip side of that is I never buy into – I think analytics are probably a really useful tool on a lot of different fronts. I don’t understand a lot of them as well as I should. But I try to. And I’m really open-minded on having more information as opposed to less information. But I’ve never really subscribed to the theory that – and you see this all of the time on Twitter from a lot of people over analytics – they talk about players like they’re garbage. They talk about them like they can’t even play."

Enjoy.

Intro Music: Kindergarten - Zeus
Outro Music: Tweeter and the Monkey Man - Headstones (covering the Traveling Wilburys).

Follow Ryan Wagman on Twitter

Follow Gus Katsaros on Twitter (@Katshockey)

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Kats Krunch – Breaking Systems: Blues from the Outside

Gus Katsaros — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 15:42:33 +0000

I’m going to try something a little different this season, hopefully it becomes a regular feature, but I’m not sure about frequency.

I love the expansion of system work being performed in the hockey universe and feel that this is an important aspect of team/player evaluation.

There’s a range of twitter follows that do a great job here:

Prashanth Iyer (Detroit)
Mike Darnay & Jesse Marshall (Penguins)
Jack Han (#1minutetactics)
Dave Shapiro (Rangers)
Charlie O’Connor (Philadelphia)

And plenty of others that I have missed.

I’d like to take this into a different direction. Everyone’s read Hockey Plays and Strategies and finding use in spotting trends. I’d like this space to be more about ‘breaking’ the system and offering ideas on how to do that with a certain play, or team scenario, or even make up a play that may fit a particular situation.

The main theme is breaking the system, which every video coach and data analyst should eventually be doing under a team umbrella.

First up, the St. Louis Blues offensive zone entry.

**************

Sometime over the second half of 2015-16, glossing over some data from the Passing Project in the search of identifying rush opportunities, the Blues popped up. Before season’s end, with some video review, the outside/inside approach to the Blues zone entries is fairly evident.

They attack from the outside, stretching the defense to open a shooting lane, exploiting open space. This wide angle approach is regular, looking for outside lanes to penetrate the zone, with a support trailer following up in the same lane – allowing for a retreat to a ‘safe’ transition option should the play fizzle before it’s created.

We are going to mash some data and video to illustrate this strategy, with the question being, can the passing project provide a window into offensive zone strategy.

Project founder, Ryan Stimson attempted to do just that with this Tacalytics piece highlighting offensive strategy.

Ryan Stimson and his passing crew amass data for three passes prior to a shooting attempt (on goal, missed or blocked – denoted here as a ‘non-shot’ on goal). Adding dimension is shot event origin s(coring chance home plate area or outside, as well as spatially from all three zones, including direction (left, right or from the center). I would highly recommend getting familiar with this project, because I’ll be referring to it often. If you want to help track games, get in touch with Ryan.

For my purposes here, we are looking to isolate passes that Stimson has labelled ‘shot assists’ – the last pass before a shot event:

Originated from the offensive zone on either the right or left side (not off a faceoff)
Pass was made into the scoring chance area or outside
A shot event (shot, goal or just an attempt) from the home plate scoring area

The Blues are among NHL leaders in plays originating from the outside and culminating in a shot from the scoring chance area.

The Blues had 20 games recorded. The average number of games tracked is 27 when removing two almost complete Chicago and New Jersey that slightly skew results (raises average to 30)

League wide norms at 5v5, area in the table below, with cumulative number of passes fired from the scoring chance area (SC), or non-scoring chance area. The percentage is a differential indicating the percentage of shots from the scoring area (SC divided by (SC+NSC).

NHL	SC	NSC	tot	%age of SC shots
Shot Attempts	4552	9757	14309	31.8
SOG	2448	3800	6248	39.2
Non-SOG	2104	5957	8061	26.1

Isolating St. Louis, produced the results below, with their ranking in each category.

All	Rk	SC	NSC	tot	%age
Shot Attempts	1st	136	199	335	41
SOG	3rd	73	88	161	45
Non-SOG	2nd	63	111	174	36

We are primarily interested with the Blues zone entry, but when they do get into the zone without a play into the middle, extended zone time is either below the goal line, or up the wall, to the outside.

Noting that positional fluidity manifests in the attack, when filtering only for forwards we see an NHL leading pattern.

Fwds Only	Rk	%age	Lg Avg	St Dev
Shot Attempts	1st	43.32	32.19	3.66
SOG	2nd	47.11	39.06	4.45
Non-SOG	1st	39.68	26.39	4.79

Lets go to video from 2016-17 – as coaching staff has said they’ve implemented changes to their systems.

In this first video, the key piece is the trailer. Vladimir Tarasenko streaks in off the left wing, with David Perron backing him up in the outside lane. There’s no inside drive or anything preventing the play from moving closer to the middle of the ice until well after the entry.

The trailer is key in this scenario, and it will be the central theme of their zone entry and outside approach.

Even with a clear cut two on one forming, Robby Fabri seems somewhat hesitant to drive to the inside and only veers after the pass comes to him, which by that time is offside.

I’m speculating somewhat here because I don’t know what’s happening in his head, but he doesn’t cross the faceoff dots until he is in the offensive zone and the play’s already been whistled dead at the blueline.

Here is a Blues quick break through the neutral zone, in the middle of the ice, yet Paul Stastny forces a pass through a stick and a nearby defender over to the wing.

The Blues incorporated additional risk (without creating any additional benefit – in fact detracting from potential benefit) in the forced pass almost at dead center ice just to get the puck to the streaking Robby Fabbri on the wing.

Alex Steen did his job pushing back the defense pairing into their own zone, then riding the blueline for the stealth weak side entry.

So, the play is forced up the wing and the weak side winger approaches from an outside angle offering little offensive support other than as a trailer.

What’s missing here?

Zero net drive.

There’s no middle lane drive, it’s all on the outside converging to the crease. The winger makes the play without any support, aside from the high player too high in the zone, or on the weak side.

Instead of making a bee-line to the net, Stastny takes up the familiar support position in the outside lane.

There might benefit into the structure to ensure defensive numbers in case the play breaks down which is the ‘safe’ play, but it’s eating at the potential benefit.

During the playoffs, the most frustrating aspect of the Blues forward game was using the outside lane drive and then setting up a cycle or fighting for pucks in the perimeter, losing a battle and repeating the sequence with a dump in. They met their match against San Jose that took away their high posts in the neutral zone (outside of the zone and outside the dots) and didn’t allow any excessive zone time by using the middle of the ice (inside the zone and inside the dots) that wasn’t as heavily trafficked.

Chicago let them operate on the outside and the Blues did an excellent job at scooping up loose pucks. Dallas, with their mid-ice collapse and ‘protect the house’ mentality in the defensive zone almost fell right into the Blues game plan and fell apart when they finally pressured enough to put the series away.

An ideal play here for the zone entry could have been across to the weak side instead of the forced pass to the left wing with Fabbri and Stastny hitting the middle of the ice for net drive, also forcing both defenders to shift their feet.

Ken Hitchcock architected this method to creating offense. Players cut through the outside to the goal if they can get a step around the defender, or they pull the defenseman over towards the outside creating a lane for the support trailer to either shoot on goal, or take it right to the crease.

The latter option is illustrated below.

*****

Even when a defenseman replaces a forward and joins the rush, the mentality is the same.

Mobile blueliner, Alex Pietrangelo, carries the puck up the middle and passes off to the wing instead of attacking the blueline in the middle. Instead of preserving a dangerous inside drive, he takes the lane support position with a net drive coming from the outside via the weak side winger.

Breaking the System

As an opponent recognizing the discernible pattern, I would advise coaching staff to let the outside puck carrier skate to the outside and only engage fully if:

puck carrier has passed the facoff dots and hasn’t cut into the net
backside pressure eliminates the support lane trailer
defense partner has clear position in the crease

Approaching zone entries:

instead of cheating into the middle, recognize the pattern and post a little wider along the blueline in anticipation of the outside entry
if possible with numbers, lineup a forward in between the defense pairing, allowing blueline engage to be supported by a forward
backside pressure attacks the puck battle in support position to ensure no loose pucks squirt into open areas

Follow Gus Katsaros on Twitter (@Katshockey)

Podcast Debut: To Be Named Later

Gus Katsaros and Ryan Wagman — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 04:04:36 +0000

Filling the ever more saturating podcast market, Ryan Wagman and I will be putting together our thoughts in this podcast that has yet to be named - something we hope to rectify in the near future. There's no specific release schedule but hopefully we can pump out a weekly episode.

This isn't going to be a prospect podcast, there are others that will follow the draft eligible players and developmental league circuit, we don't want this to be about that. This is more about the art of prospecting

The concept behind this show is as a casual (stress, casual) blank canvas to allow us to discuss and expand on player evaluation process adding our own mix of philosophy and personal preferences, while going much more in depth on aspects of scouting.

This first episode is an introduction to ourselves some general scouting concepts and a loose NHL season preview. Some listeners may have questions they would like to have answered. I'm sure we'll get around to doing some of that too at some point.

Enjoy.

Intro Music: Yawning or Snarling - Tragically Hip
Outro Music: So Hard Done By - Tragically Hip

Follow Ryan Wagman on Twitter

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