THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

(Disclaimer: I don’t follow hockey at all.)

Is it possible that the best players play more minutes per game in the playoffs? If they do, I would probably change this to goals per 20 minutes of ice time (or 15 or 25, or whatever makes sense).

Too bad the article had to be so short. Are 4 paragraphs all the space the WSJ allowed you?

Are playoff games longer on average than regular season games since you are not necessarily limited to 5 minutes of OT? If the average playoff game is longer, then playoff scoring would be reduced more than 10%.

I don’t know that much about hockey. I follow it every now and then. Most of my exposure has been limited to the 1998, 2003, 2004, and 2006 playoffs. One thing I have noticed from these games is that teams adopt a more conservative offensive strategy during the playoffs.

Yes, I’m given about 250 words, which is quite the challenge to bring in a new concept, explain it, and then try to make it relevant for current events.

Personally, I’d rather they give me as many words as I want, but I presume they have a certain focus and that readers just want a quick read on their way to something else.

***

Yes, certainly the number of minutes is more in the playoffs, but it cancels out among all the big scorers anyway.  It’s not as if the leaders/trailers list is biased to the first-line players.

Seeing Messier on the list was so gratifying, since he’s been called the greatest leader in (US/Canada) sports.  Doug Gilmour is an all-heart player.  Gretzky is Gretzky.  Claude Lemieux I had no doubt would appear on the list… just a matter of where.

Federov is interesting, because his regular seasons are so not impressive (except for his Hart year), so that he picks it up a step is no surprise.  In his case, his playoffs is his true talent, and his regular season he is lazy.

In last place is Mogilny.  Interesting because these two Russians both burst onto the scene at the same time.

I was quite pleased that the clutch players look like what you’d expect, unlike in MLB, when you see the clutch lists, they don’t look anything like what you might expect.

Given your constraints, I think these articles are turning out really well.  I can’t believe Gretzky is showing up as clutch on here too - part of me still thinks that “clutch” means that one is slacking off a bit in normal situations.

Although, to add to the list of confounds, if Gretzky’s team was the #1 seed a lot, he’d end up playing a #8 seed in the first round, which would have a #8-seed-esque goalie.

Also, I wonder how much of Messier’s clutch was due to Kurri, and vice-versa.  A lot of times, simply being on the ice with a high-scoring linemate is enough to get a bunch of assists.

Anyways, again - really enjoyed it, and I think it’s exactly what they (the WSJ and/or its readers) are looking for.

Much late on this comment, but by my reckoning, Trevor Linden is actually in a tie for 2nd with a +32.  He increased his ppg from .63 to .84.  Which is why Trev is the greatest Canuck ever (sorry Pavel...)

Yes, I had Linden up there, at +29.

Among the players in the Gretzky-and-later time period:
67 Mark Messier
32 Jari Kurri
31 Doug Gilmour
29 Kevin Stevens
29 Trevor Linden
24 Sergei Fedorov
24 Brian Leetch
22 Claude Lemieux
22 Wayne Gretzky
20 Chris Pronger
...
-19 Pavel Datsyuk
-19 Steve Yzerman
-21 Keith Primeau
-22 Dave Andreychuk
-23 Teemu Selanne
-23 Brent Sutter
-23 Joe Mullen
-28 Tomas Sandstrom
-28 John LeClair
-30 Alexander Mogilny

Now, ideally, I would improve upon this by noting their talent levels in each playoff year.  For example, I will presume that the reason Yzerman did so bad is that a disproportionate number of his playoff games occurred in his 30s, where his points production was lower than his career level.

I would NOT adjust based on the regular season points in the year of the playoffs.  You could for example have someone with 70 points in the regular season, followed by 100, followed by 70.  We don’t think this player suddenly improved and then suddenly reverted back to his usual form.  If however, he played in 4, then 12, then 4 playoff games, our expectation for him would be too high.

This probably took me 200 words to explain, so you can see why you can’t adjust too much in these little articles.

Here’s Rob Vollman from a few days ago, doing a similar exercise:

http://www.puckprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=98

Steve:

http://noticeofmotion.blogspot.com/2010/05/clutching-claude.html

Tango: 

can you do this for this years playoffs?

I’ll leave it to others to handle.