Pittsburgh Penguins

Team North America: A Worthy Test of the Speed Hypothesis

/ Thomas A. Glass / Leave a comment

After their sleepy start in the 2015-16 campaign, many were surprised that the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup. What was the secret of their second half success? Most experts will say that the answer is team speed and their ferocious forecheck. If this is a “copycat” league, we are likely to see many teams looking to increase team speed in reply. Are we entering a new phase in hockey? Is team speed the new thing?

The World Cup of Hockey offers many reasons to be excited about the state of the game we love. However, some have questioned whether the two novelty teams are phony fabrications. Team North America (under-23 players from USA and Canada) and the pan-European team represent something other than national pride. Is this experiment worth the departure from national pride as the organizing principle of an International tournament?

These two oddball groupings may be gimmicks, but they offer something both powerful and unexpected.

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What Teams Meet, Exceed or Underperform in the Playoffs Relative to the Regular Season?

/ Thomas A. Glass / Leave a comment

It’s summertime. The Canadians are all at their cottages (whatever that means) and the NHL Network is dominated by repeat broadcasts of games we have already heard.

It’s a dull time for hockey fans.

Sure, there is the odd bit of trade news, some buzz about the upcoming World Cup, and the fascination with Boomer’s stat packs and “five burning questions.”

The summer is a time for thinking big picture about the game we love.

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TEAMODEX: A New Tool to Capture Team Momentum Across a Season

/ Thomas A. Glass / Leave a comment

It’s true, I am a Penguins fan. I’m Steel City proud when I hear commentators say that the Penguins have been the “hottest team” in the final stretch of the season. But what does this really mean? In baseball, everyone looks at team performance over the last ten games. Sometimes we see that statistic reported in hockey. But unlike baseball, where games are played about every day, a ten-game period is a longer period of time in hockey. And, knowing that a team is 5 and 5 in the last ten does not tell us much about team momentum. Consider these examples of ten-game trajectories of three hypothetical teams. Note they are all 5 and 5 in the last ten:

Team A Win Win Win Win Win Loss Loss Loss Loss Loss
Team B Win Loss Win Loss Win Loss Win Loss Win Loss
Team C Loss Loss Loss Loss Loss Win Win Win Win Win
Do these teams look like they are trending the same? Are they equivalent in terms of team momentum?

As I have argued before, hockey is a cyclical game. There are nights that every puck seems to land on a friendly stick. Opposing goals fill like rabbit cages in springtime. Opposing shots ring off iron. This is a streaky game. So, how do we capture the movement and directionality of those cycles? And how do we track the momentum of a team over a season? I can’t find many good examples of this out there so I invented one myself.

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Prediction Time: LET’S GO SNIUGNEP!

/ Thomas A. Glass / Leave a comment

As the first round of the playoffs get rolling, it’s time for everyone to declare their predictions.

Here goes: I predict that the Pittsburgh sniugneP will win the Stanley Cup.

That’s Penguins spelled backwards.

Here’s the theory: the sniugneP have had the opposite season relative to the last couple years. They’ve made the playoffs for ten straight years. However, recently, they have played well early in the year, racked up points manhandling weaker teams, and fallen short in the playoffs.

In 2013, the Pens were picked to go the Stanley Cup Finals (e.g., Jesse Spector, Sporting News, January 18, 2013). However both that year and last, they stumbled late in the season and lost to the Rangers.

This year, it’s the opposite. Their start was slow and their star player played poorly until Christmas. What’s wrong with Sidney Crosby? was the most plentiful puzzle in hockey. The start of this season involved plenty of adversity and handwringing. Adversity hardens a team and steels it for the rigors of the playoffs. It is this steeling of the alloy of the team that creates a more robust capacity to absorb hardship when it inevitably shows up in the course of the playoffs.

This is why the Capitals will not win the Stanley Cup.

The Penguins on the other hand had their adversity, their hardening early. Instead of a jack-rabbit start then limping to the playoffs, they turned their team’s profile on its head, becoming the hottest team in the league through March and April. The Penguins scored five or more goals per game for five of the last six games that mattered. More importantly they limited shots on goals by the opposition. They tormented teams, many still in the playoff hunt, with dizzying team speed, particularly on the second and third lines.

The factors that predict success in the playoffs are not the same as those that predict success in the regular season. In the playoffs, team defense, speed, hot goaltending and the strength of the third and fourth lines are what lead to Stanley Cups. The sniugneP were strong in all these areas after the break. More importantly, these are all areas of weakness in the past several seasons. And this they did with their superstar goal tender and Evgeni Malkin unable to play. This year the Penguins have a much stronger third and fourth line. Under Coach Sullivan, team speed has increased dramatically. He has them calm and believing in themselves. He should be in the discussion for the Jack Adams Award. This year, the sniugneP have a chance because they have turned things around.

Literally.

Holiday Hockey Hope: An Open Letter to the Pittsburgh Penguins

/ Thomas A. Glass / Leave a comment

Here’s a simple message I bet you aren’t hearing very often lately: everything is going just right!

But wait, we’ve lost four straight, we can’t seem to score, we’ve got some big injuries, the frustration is mounting, players are sniping at one another, and everyone wants to know: What’s wrong with our captain?

Things may seem bleak as we approach Christmas 2015. I’d like to put a different, more positive spin on things. An argument can be made that things are right where they should be. More importantly, some of the things people are trying to fix will actually make them get worse and worse. This leads to a rather strange prescription, one that the players may get something from. Here goes.

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