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By Darryl Folkerson To the casual hockey fan, Ryan Malone looked like Wayne Gretzky last spring. In the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs, Malone looked like a man possessed – scoring goals, drawing penalties, blocking shots any way possible, and crushing opponents all over the ice surface. However, to the more sophisticated hockey mind, Malone’s good play was just that, a surface impression. Malone’s underlying numbers dug up by a mostly blogging community showed a discrepancy to what the eye saw. It appeared that based on the amount of ice time Malone got, the teammates he played with, and the large amount of scoring chances he allowed in his own end, Malone was a very mediocre player masquerading as an elite one. However, Malone was still looked on favourably in most hockey circles. He signed a huge free agent contract this summer and has seen his play slump considerably ever since. It’s a prediction that was easily made by hockey’s elite statisticians. But this kind of number-crunching will never be popular in the mainstream media, no matter how effectively the numbers prove a point. Tyler Dellow was one of those statisticians who recognized Malone’s superb play was based more on circumstance than talent. The problem is Dellow doesn’t come from the traditional mold of a hockey “expert.” He has never played professionally, only watches a handful of games per year, and spends most of his time analyzing hundreds of numbers across a spreadsheet while producing the results and captioned analysis on his blog. Dellow is part of a new school hockey community, ones that use stats instead of their eyes to analyze players. “Malone is a great example of an old school guy saying geez, 25 goals, there’s a hockey player,” said Dellow. “Most people become really impressed by him. But if you’re somebody who looks at it the way I look at it, he barely breaks 2 even strength points an hour, he’s not really a great powerplay scorer. I don’t think he was a big difference maker for the Penguins.” The new school uses hundreds of varying factors to analyze a player. Instead of analyzing a player by the traditional stats of goals, assists, and points like the mainstream media does, new stats like even-strength points per hour (points per hour of even-strength ice time played), corsi number (shots for while on the ice – shots against while on the ice), and quality of competition (rating the other 5 opponents being played against while on the ice). If that sounds confusing to the casual hockey fan, Dellow understands why. “A lot of the stats guys come from an academic background. For example I’m a lawyer and there are many guys with PhD’s who spend time on this. It’s a pretty eclectic group of people.” This is the problem with the advanced statistics. They entail an advanced in order to understand them. Most mainstream media members must write or speak to a broad audience from many different backgrounds, not just academic minds. David Staples is a writer for the Edmonton Journal. Staples came across advanced statistics only a year ago. He agrees with Dellow that they do provide added insight and analysis into a game that is talked and written about mostly in clichés and roundabout language. “I think there is a great deal of validity (with the new statistics). Stats like quality of competition is a crucial concept,” said Staples. “But our job isn’t to service the statistical nut. We reach out to everyone. When we write about these stats we have to explain them in simple terms so the average fan can get them and I don’t think the experts who are coming up with these stats have yet done that.” Nonetheless, this brand new statistical revolution in hockey has transformed some hockey minds. It is still small but it is growing. Matt Fenwick is another blogger and statistical analyst. He understands the mainstream media’s reluctance to accept the new stats but still holds out hope they will play a bigger role in the future. “I don’t hold it against newspapers or the intermission panels on T.V. for not really getting into it because a lot of it just takes a while to sink in and understand. What I don’t get is why TSN.ca wouldn’t devote a couple hundred grand to having a couple people looking at this stuff. I mean they spend so much time chasing rumors that you’d think they could devote a little bit of time to actually explaining the game better to people.”
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