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Claimed:Down On The Farm: Statistics And The VHLM #1[Final 6/6]


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Down On The Farm: Statistics And The VHLM

 

Edition 1: Evaluating Shot Differentials.
 


This is going to be the first of hopefully many looks into the more statistical side of the VHLM, where I'll do my best to provide some insight into what's been going on and ideally, what it could mean for the future. The point of this series is mainly to show that although I'm not particularly great at using statistics, scratching slightly below the surface can provide both interesting ideas and further evidence of what we already know.

I'm sure everyone with an interest in the league has been following the S44 playoffs, which look to be winding down with the Saskatoon Wild holding a comprehensive 3-1 lead against the Oslo Storm. With this in mind, and as we're moving into the off-season, I thought it might be a good idea to go through each team and judge their S44 regular season based entirely on one thing; their shot differential per game, ie. the average number of shots a team takes against the number of shots taken against them.

 

The shot differential is widely regarded as a telling statistic, with the majority of successful teams having a positive shot differential. For example this year's President's Trophy winning New York Rangers held a shot differential of 5.5, while the last-placed Buffalo Sabres held one of -11.4, a telling difference.

 

For the purpose of this article, we will calculate the shot differential per game as follows;

 

Shot differential per game = Shots taken per game - Shots allowed per game.

 

I've collected all the information into the table below.

 

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Looking at the shot differentials from this perspective, and when we compare this table to the regular season standings, one blindingly obvious point becomes clear; the higher your shot percentage, the more games you win. We can observe from the table that the three teams with the best shot differentials are the Saskatoon Blades, the Yukon Rush and the Oslo Storm, whilst the three worst differentials belong to the Moscow Red Wolves, the Ottawa Lynx and the Bern Royals.

 

The main significance behind this is obviously the fact that the three teams with the best shot differentials were the three best regular season teams, whilst the teams with the three worst differentials were the worst regular season teams, however, the carry-on from this is evident in the playoffs. Saskatoon and Oslo, two teams with high shot differentials are currently competing in the championship final, with Saskatoon, the team with the best differential, poised to win. This enables us to essentially define the shot differential as a measure of dominance; a team like the Wild have evidently controlled the majority of the games they've played by being able to take so many shots while being defensively sound enough to allow so few, whilst teams like the Royals and the Lynx have had a bad time of it, getting massively out-shot throughout the regular season.

 

It's worth nothing that the huge range of shot differentials we see in the VHLM is due to the massive gap in quality between certain teams, where compared to a league like the NHL, where a good number of teams are of roughly the same level. 

 

Whilst in this case we haven't really learnt anything new from the shot differential, it's worth noting that it confirms what we already knew, and is another way of showing the dominance that Saskatoon have shown throughout both the regular season and the playoffs. Thanks for reading, hope you found it interesting and learned something new!

 

**Note**: I had originally intended on doing this piece about the slightly more advanced statistics involving all shots attempted including those blocked and those that missed but wasn't able to find the complete data. Apologies!

Edited by dankoa
  • 2 weeks later...
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