Synopsis
In the inaugural edition it was written that “statistical analysis is coming to hockey in a wave very similar to the one that hit baseball years ago,” and guess what? That wave is here! With every passing season, there's another explosion of new analysts, new websites, new perspectives, and new developments. Non-traditional statistics are being used in TV and radio broadcasts, front offices are hiring statistical analysts, and newspapers and magazines are including whole new sets of data. It used to be that front offices, agencies, and media outlets would use analytics to get an edge, but now it's being used to avoid falling behind. Soon, venturing forward without an analytics team will be like venturing forward without trainers, or equipment managers. While we fans can certainly continue to enjoy the sport without analytics (and equipment managers), knowledge of the underlying numbers can help stretch that enjoyment. Acting as an invaluable supplement to traditional analysis, modern statistics can be used to test the validity of the conventional wisdom, and to gain insight into what teams are doing behind the scenes --- or maybe what they should be doing! Inspired by Bill James' Baseball Abstract, Hockey Abstract is not an annual guide to read once and place on a shelf, but a timeless reference of the mainstream applications and limitations of hockey analytics. More than just an update, this 2014 edition is 40% bigger and better, and includes heavyweight co-authors Tom Awad and Iain Fyffe. The Hall of Fame, what makes good players good, team-level player usage chart interpretations, shot quality, score effects, the value of enforcers, a deep look at goaltending, and a hunt for the game's best at scoring goals, drawing penalties, killing penalties and working the power play are all among this year's topics. Whether you use Hockey Abstract as a primer for today's new statistics, as a reference for leading edge research and hard-to-find statistical data, or whether you read it for its passionate and engaging story-telling, Hockey Abstract 2014 belongs on every serious hockey fan's bookshelf.
About the Author
Rob Vollman, Tom Awad, and Iain Fyffe are three of the most well-known and longest-serving names in the world of hockey analytics. Working together since 2000, they have since co-authored nine books, developed dozens of key innovations, and published countless articles. While modern advanced statistical hockey analysis stands on a mountain of complexity, their work is best known for being expressed in clear, focused and applicable terms, and often presented in a humourous and entertaining way. Whether you're arguing about who should be in the Hall of Fame or which team made the best free agent signing, their objective approach will add clear, cold facts to the discussion in a style that is undeniably engaging — and convincing! Rob's most popular innovations include Player Usage Charts, Quality Starts for goaltenders, measuring a player's cap value with Goals Versus Salary (GVS) and advances in the field of NHL Translations and League Equivalencies (NHLe), to understand how well players coming from other leagues will perform. Tom is best known for the field's leading catch-all statistic, Goals Versus Threshold (GVT), the VUKOTA projection system, the shot-based Delta statistic, and advances in the field of shot quality. Iain's credentials include the Inductinator for predicting who will be in the Hall of Fame, the Projectinator for projecting the careers of prospects, his Point Allocations system, the Disciplined Aggression Proxy, and his key contributions to our historical records, such as Dan Bain's career statistics. Their analysis can be found regularly at sites and publications such as Hockey Prospectus, ESPN Insider, the Hockey Research Journal, Bleacher Report, Arctic Ice Hockey and Montreal's Journal Metro, and has been featured in the Hockey News, the Globe and Mail, the Washington Post, McKeen's magazine, Hockey Night in Canada, and radio programs in over a dozen cities.
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