Daniel 565 Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 (edited) 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. 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 August 25, 2015 by dankoa Sixersfan594, diamond_ace and eaglesfan036 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eaglesfan036 4,593 Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Great work, someone looked into statistics a while ago and it was really interesting. I hope you do more of these Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowboyinAmerica 2,843 Posted August 26, 2015 Share Posted August 26, 2015 I enjoyed this as well, excellent job. Always a sucker for statistical articles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kylrad 178 Posted August 28, 2015 Share Posted August 28, 2015 Content 3/3 Nice article, I look forward to more Grammar 1/1 Not much to find Appearance 1/1 Looks good Overall 6/6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Baozi 1,658 Posted August 29, 2015 Moderator Share Posted August 29, 2015 Woot corsi! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil 5,111 Posted August 29, 2015 Share Posted August 29, 2015 Remember to claim 12 TPE for this, as it is your first 6 TPE Point Task (first 3 are doubled) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel 565 Posted August 29, 2015 Author Share Posted August 29, 2015 Remember to claim 12 TPE for this, as it is your first 6 TPE Point Task (first 3 are doubled) Way ahead of you bud! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CowboyinAmerica 2,843 Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 Claimed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.png.ed69a7260a477fcf4feead7a0e4b7506.png)
Recommended Posts