Hockey Abstract Presents... Stat Shot


Book Description

Making advanced stats simple, practical, and fun for hockey fans Advanced stats give hockeyÍs powerbrokers an edge, and now fans can get in on the action. Stat Shot is a fun and informative guide hockey fans can use to understand and enjoy what analytics says about team building, a playerÍs junior numbers, measuring faceoff success, recording save percentage, the most one-sided trades in history, and everything you ever wanted to know about shot-based metrics. Acting as an invaluable supplement to traditional analysis, Stat Shot can be used to test the validity of conventional wisdom, and to gain insight into what teams are doing behind the scenes „ or maybe what they should be doing. Whether looking for a reference for leading-edge research and hard-to-find statistical data, or for passionate and engaging storytelling, Stat Shot belongs on every serious hockey fanÍs bookshelf.




Hockey Analytics


Book Description

A fraction of a second can be the difference between a one-timer finding the back of the net and a blocked shot that starts transition the other way. In the fast and fluid game of hockey, time and space drive success. But hockey analytics hasn't appreciated these two most important factors. It hasn't respected the complexity of the game...until now. Backed by the findings of an original study never before released to the public, Hockey Analytics demonstrates that-whether it is a failed pinch in the offensive zone, a missed rotation in the defensive zone or other blunder-the vast majority of goals are scored when the defense's positioning is compromised. The authors identify the actions that give players the time and space to read, react and execute. Their findings will shock even the most experienced hockey minds and call into question strategies regularly employed by the game's best coaches. It is simple, actionable and nothing like you've seen before. Whether you're a fan, player or coach, Hockey Analytics will change how you experience hockey.




Stat Shot: A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics


Book Description

With every passing season, statistical analysis is playing an ever-increasing role in how hockey is played and covered. Knowledge of the underlying numbers can help fans stretch their enjoyment of the game. Acting as an invaluable supplement to traditional analysis, Stat Shot: A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics can be used to test the validity of conventional wisdom and to gain insight into what teams are doing behind the scenes — or maybe what they should be doing! Inspired by Bill James’s Baseball Abstract, Rob Vollman has written a timeless reference of the mainstream applications and limitations of hockey analytics. With over 300 pages of fresh analysis, it includes a guide to the basics, how to place stats into context, how to translate data from one league to another, the most comprehensive glossary of hockey statistics, and more. Whether A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics is used as a primer for today’s new statistics, as a reference for leading edge research and hard-to-find statistical data, or read for its passionate and engaging storytelling, it belongs on every serious fan’s bookshelf. A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics makes advanced stats simple, practical, and fun.




Belfry Hockey


Book Description

"Darryl knows my game now. He knows what's going to work and what's not going to work. It's about fine-tuning it and always trying to improve.... It's an ongoing conversation about how to get better and how to pick up a little thing here or there to give yourself an advantage." —Patrick Kane, from his foreword An unmissable look at how even hockey's best find ways to get even better. Darryl Belfry is regarded as hockey's premier development coach, with clients including Sidney Crosby, Patrick Kane, John Tavares, and Auston Matthews. But his highly sought-after training methods aren't only for elite NHL stars; they have helped players of all levels uncover new pathways to performance excellence. Packed with fascinating stories and valuable insight, Belfry Hockey: Strategies to Teach the World's Best Athletes details this powerful curriculum, developed over years of persistent research. It's a system that emphasizes discovering authentic identity, pinpointing translatable skill, building a personal performance matrix, and more. Not only will players learn hundreds of techniques to improve their game, but teachers—inside and outside of hockey coaching—will gain an arsenal of groundbreaking strategies to connect with their students.




Tape to Space


Book Description

Ryan Stimson outlines a modern approach to playing fluid, creative hockey based on sound analytical research. He shows you, the coach, how to build a tactical framework from the ground up and illustrates how each aspect of the system links with each other. Part 1 details the overall philosophy behind team play, roster construction, and tactical decisions. "Should we play fast or slow? Which players should play together?" Part 2 takes a modern approach to hockey tactics, using years of quantitative research by Stimson and others determined to find more efficient and optimal ways of playing the game. You won't find a rigid system here, but a set of beliefs and ideology put on the ice that incorporates the highest levels of creativity, fluidity, and support. Finally in part Part 3, a narration of Stimson's coaching experience as he attempts to bring this style of play to life at the 14U level. What works? What doesn't? How does this new approach work when clashing with an old-school coach? Stimson reevaluates everything from names of positions to optimal routes in transition play. This book will appeal to any coach wanting to learn more about analytics, and to any analyst wanting to learn more about tactics. Stimson meets you in the middle and illustrates what can come out of union of the two: Total Hockey.




Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick


Book Description

Beat the odds with a bold strategy from McKinsey & Company "Every once in a while, a genuinely fresh approach to business strategy appears" —legendary business professor Richard Rumelt, UCLA McKinsey & Company's newest, most definitive, and most irreverent book on strategy—which thousands of executives are already using—is a must-read for all C-suite executives looking to create winning corporate strategies. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick is spearheading an empirical revolution in the field of strategy. Based on an extensive analysis of the key factors that drove the long-term performance of thousands of global companies, the book offers a ground-breaking formula that enables you to objectively assess your strategy's real odds of future success. "This book is fundamental. The principles laid out here, with compelling data, are a great way around the social pitfalls in strategy development." —Frans Van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips N.V. The authors have discovered that over a 10-year period, just 1 in 12 companies manage to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company's current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to give it the strongest chance of vaulting over the competition. This is not another strategy framework. Rather, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick shows, through empirical analysis and the experiences of dozens of companies that have successfully made multiple big moves, that to dramatically improve performance, you have to overcome incrementalism and corporate inertia. "A different kind of book—I couldn't put it down. Inspiring new insights on the facts of what it takes to move a company's performance, combined with practical advice on how to deal with real-life dynamics in management teams." —Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup Latin America




Stat Shot


Book Description

Best known for Player Usage Charts and his record-breaking ESPN Insider contributions, Rob Vollman was first published in the fall 2001 issue of the Hockey Research Journal and has since co-authored 10 books in the Hockey Abstract, Hockey Prospectus, and McKeen's magazine series. He writes for NHL.com, and lives in Calgary, Alberta. Tom Awad is a Montreal-based electrical engineer who loves applying numbers to his job, hockey, and anything else he can get his hands on. He has co-authored six previous books on hockey analytics. Iain Fyffe created Hockeythink (originally Puckerings), the first dedicated hockey analytics site, in 2001. He has served as editor of the Hockey Research Journal and was a co-author of the books Hockey Prospectus 2011 and 2012 and Hockey Abstract 2014, as well as the author of On His Own Side of the Puck. He lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick




Data Analytics in Football


Book Description

Data Analytics in Football provides students, researchers, and coaches with a firm grounding in the principles of modern performance analysis. It offers an insight into the use of positional data, exploring how they can be collected, modeled, analyzed, and interpreted. Introducing cutting-edge methods, the book challenges long-held assumptions and encourages a new way of thinking about football analysis. The book seeks to define the role of positional data in football match analysis by exploring topics such as the following: What is positional data analysis, and how did it emerge from conventional match analysis? How can positional data be collected, and which technologies can be used? What key performance indicators based on positional data should be used? How can traditional match analysis be complemented by using positional data and advanced KPIs? How can these new methods evolve in the future? Based on data collected from active leagues and fully revised for the new second edition, the text now also examines data collection in relation to other sports, how a data-driven approach in decision-making is achieved by professional teams, the potential of the new methods of data collection, and how they could evolve in the future. Accessibly written, packed full of examples from elite football, and supplemented with expert interviews, Data Analytics in Football is a thought-provoking, rigorously evidence-based guide to the use of data analytics in football performance analysis. As such, it is a vital resource for any student, researcher, or coach interested in performance analysis and skill acquisition, or anyone interested in football more generally.




Sports Analytics


Book Description

This book is a collection of applications of analytic techniques to a number of popular sports including baseball, basketball, hockey, Jai Alai, NFL football and horseracing. We focus on both the statistics of the sporting events and betting strategies on the events. The subject is fascinating as there are many twists and subtle complicated decisions.Sports analytics applies mathematical and statistical methods to important questions in the structure and performance of sporting activities using the same basic methods and approaches as data analysts in other disciplines.Sports games and events are a fruitful area for study and to evaluate betting strategies as there is extensive data and mean reversion. With prices changing continuously, risk arbitrage bets can be made. Moreover, little errors, like a penalty to a player or an error in a call by a referee, can change the score of a game and corresponding betting prices. The collection and analysis of in-game data can inform players, coaches and staff on effective decision making during sporting events.Novel features of the book include: an analysis of who were the greatest baseball batters; analyses of the players most important to team success (and they are not necessarily the best players) in basketball, NFL football and hockey; a tutorial on risk arbitrage and its applications to NFL football and NBA basketball; a discussion of many ad hoc decision rules by coaches and players and what was really optimal; in the racing section we discuss breeding, the analysis of various bets like the Rainbow and ordinary Pick 6, a discussion and betting on the most important races and a visit to the Breeders' Cup with Ed Thorp to demonstrate the place and show system in action.




Stathead Hockey


Book Description

Explains how stats are important to players, coaches, and fans in pro hockey.