Over the past few years, I have been getting more and more interested in using my statistics background to find new ways of looking at the information generated from hockey play. Some of it you have seen a bit of here and some I have not published yet.
So, I was excited when the folks that are responsible for Baseball Prospectus approached me to join a new team that would look at stats and hockey, with me focusing on prospects. I am happy to say that we launched earlier this week and can be found at www.puckprospectus.com. Take a look and as soon as the comments link has been enabled, let us know what you think.
Some of my colleagues at Puck Prospectus, as well as some of those at NHL teams, think that, if we could only predict how players would do in the future based upon past performance, who would need scouts to spend six hours driving out to BFE to sit on a hard bench for three hours just to see the player they drove all this way to view get thrown out of the game in the first 15 minutes. Or benched, or injured early in the game.
But alas, unlike some others, I strongly feel that those sometimes futile scouting trips are a necessity. Its just that they should be used in combination with new types of stats, and better uses of the ones we have, to predict future player performance.
And just as statistics should be combined with subjective material in deciding whether a player fits a team, I believe that the prediction of future performance also has a subjective component. I will be bringing that belief to my work at Puck Prospectus--which should create some interesting discussions with some of the more strictly statistically oriented writers over the coming months.
Just for the next month, I will be focusing on my work for Puck Prospectus and blogging there (which, due to copyright law, I can't duplicate here). I will, however, direct your attention there when there are articles specifically of interest to CHL News readers. And as we get closer to the CHL Drafts, I will return here.
Please continue to give me your feedback, and, remember that it will take a few weeks for us to be fully up and running over there, so, if at first, it does not totally wow you, try again a bit later. I am absolutely positive that Puck Prospectus will do some ground-breaking work to enhance the game we all love.
