MRKL on Ice: November Part 1

Snapshot of the standings morning of December 1st:

In this month’s instalment, I take a look at another statistic that contains some luck and further reveals unsustainable paces, both high and low. Individual Points Percentage (IPP) is defined as the percentage of goals scored while a player is on the ice that he had a point on. Now, I’m not going to get too carried away with looking at straight IPP numbers. Naturally, we would expect some players to factor into a lot more goals when they’re on the ice than others. Even adjusting for position, we would expect some forwards to factor into more goals than others; some players are just better at hockey than others.

Still, when it comes specifically to second assists, there’s a bunch of stuff that happens after a player has touched the puck that he has nothing to do with. It is for this reason that I have created the STAB ratio (Stefan’s Second Assists to Blanks ratio, where “second” is designated by a “T” for “two”, cause otherwise it looks like a misspelling of a Swedish car).

How is STAB calculated?

Divide points by IPP to get the total number of goals that the player was on the ice for. Subtract points to get the total number of goals that the player was on the ice for but did not factor in on, as far as the scoresheet is concerned (blanks). The ratio is then second assists to blanks, and we can derive a percentage by dividing second assists by the overall total (blanks + second assists).

Team	STAB	STAB effect
Patrik Stefans	34.43%	12.26
G-Phil's Flyers	32.35%	6.30
Moilers	31.93%	5.44
Joshfrey Krupuls	31.43%	5.84
Schizzarks	31.41%	5.28
Milan Micahleks	30.41%	3.42
Vanrooser Canicks	30.00%	1.76
Los Amjawors Kings	29.72%	2.26
Winter Claassics	29.41%	1.43
Quebec Rordiques	28.24%	-0.53
WBS Parkers	28.08%	-0.83
Mackhawks	27.40%	-2.59
Dicklas Lidstroms	26.13%	-5.01
Teeyotes	22.73%	-7.82
Magnus Faajarvis	22.47%	-10.99
Powder Rangers	22.22%	-13.88

The table above lists KL teams by their STAB percentages. Individual STABs were not calculated for each player, but rather, second assist and blank totals were tallied for entire rosters first, and then the overall percentage was calculated. The STAB effect represents the points gained or lost in the KL so far on account of players getting more or fewer second assists than probability would dictate they should.

The NHL STAB average across all players so far this season is just under 30%, which makes good sense. When 5 players are on the ice for one team and they score a goal, one is awarded a second assist, while two get “blanked”; if every goal scored had two assists, we would expect a STAB of 33.33% across the league, but of course, there are also goals that are unassisted or have only one other contributor than the scorer himself. Therefore, we would expect a slightly smaller overall percentage. The numbers for the KL are consistent with this; our league average is 28.64%.

There will continue to be differences between our teams’ STAB percentages. As the sample size increases, the variability will decrease, but it will always exist. Chance will remain a factor in this imperfect world, where all other things are not considered equal. But, what if they were? Below is how our standings would look. Four teams would be within a single point of the lead, six within 6 pts, and nine within 17! I maintain that this season we will see the closest battle ever for the Krusell Cup.

Team	Adj TTL	PBL
Mackhawks	248	0
Joshfrey Krupuls	248	0
Magnus Faajarvis	247	1
Powder Rangers	247	1
Dicklas Lidstroms	245	3
Patrik Stefans	242	6
Schizzarks	236	12
Milan Micahleks	234	14
G-Phil's Flyers	231	17
Los Amjawors Kings	218	30
Winter Claassics	208	40
Teeyotes	206	42
Moilers	195	53
W Benham-Scranton Parkers	187	61
Vanrooser Canicks	179	69
Quebec Rordiques	167	81

Limitations

As always, my models have deficiencies. I can point out two that could distort the picture here. First, all roster players have been included, not just scoring roster players. I’ve done this partly out of laziness, but also because fringe roster players are relevant considerations; a team’s 10^th or 11^th forward might have deflated totals and could or should be on the scoring roster. Second, I haven’t considered all on-ice situations. I mentioned last month that for whatever reason, stats.hockeyanalysis.com doesn’t allow visitors of the site to view cumulative totals, but instead, provides breakdowns separately for every game situation (5on5, 5on4, etc). I have done my best to include power play situations this time around, but unfortunately the site also only provides stats for players who have played over 50 minutes for a given situation. Not surprisingly, many KL players have seen time on the powerplay, but not in excess of 50 mins at this point in the season. Their PP numbers are therefore excluded. Not withstanding how that may affect a team’s overall STAB, I think the two limitations just mentioned could be seen to offset with respect to the effect size.

In the process of running these numbers, I got to see how many players on each squad had PP time over 50 mins. I find the totals to be rather telling:

Team	PPlayers
Patrik Stefans	17
Mackhawks	14
Winter Claassics	13
Magnus Faajarvis	13
Moilers	12
Dicklas Lidstroms	12
Joshfrey Krupuls	11
Schizzarks	11
Milan Micahleks	11
Powder Rangers	11
G-Phil's Flyers	9
Los Amjawors Kings	9
Quebec Rordiques	7
WBS Parkers	6
Teeyotes	5
Vanrooser Canicks	4

Power Rankings? I've changed my mind on providing them every month, partly cause I don't think much has changed over the course of November, and I kind of want to stand by my predictions from last month. I've also taken note that readership has fallen off in Malaysia, South Korea, and Namibia, so there's a bit of cost-benefit analysis going on. 

I will provide two further fun tidbits in closing, though. The KL's poorest STAB victim is Dion Phaneuf, who should have about 5 more points than he does. Conversely, the player doing the most bludgeoning so far is Jacub Voracek, benefiting with 6 points more than he should have.