Let's not let this be another disappearing puck!

Know someone at the game tonight who has an iPhone or another mobile device capable of taking video? Call them and ask them to video record what happens to the game winning goal puck. Record that thing until it gets picked up by a human and follow it until it leaves the ice! Let's not let this be another mystery where it takes weeks to find conclusive pictures or footage. With so many fans recording no one will be able to steal it.

Call your friend(s) at the game now! We need to have people recording what happens to that puck!!!

We have seen quite a physical matchup between the Bruins and Canucks so far. Which got me thinking: who fights in the playoffs? Punks and pests or regular players? You might think that players like that are more likely  to fight in playoffs. Or more "at risk" to fight to use the medical terminology (which I think is kind of a funny term). But let's see what really happens.

We all know that there are fewer fights in the postseason. That is understandable because teams are more focused on winning than entertaining. How much less fighting? Over the last 10 seasons 38% of regular season games had a fight. Compare that to only 14% of playoff games with a fight during this same time period.

So on the surface we see that fights are about only 1/3 as likely to happen in the playoffs. But is fighting as a team strategy any different in the playoffs? To answer that we should look at who is fighting. Are punks and pests leading the way as they do in the regular season? Let's put players into categories and look at the results.

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We all use stats to inform our evaluations of players, especially when we directly compare two players. It seems like a simple task, but doing it right is often one of the hardest things to do. Let's look at the save percentages of two goalies: Antero Niittymaki (SJS) and Dan Ellis (ANA).

Ellis had a better save percentage than Niittymaki for the last two seasons, yet Niitymaki had a better save percentage over this same exact time period when you look at the data together. How is that possible? It's not because of rounding error (I went out to 6 significant figures for all calculations) and it's not because of any rink recording bias either. The reason that this happened is because of a statistical paradox, explained after the jump.

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The Lightning have so far exceeded expectations in the 2011 playoffs. Their goal differential was a mere +7 during the regular season, so one might have expected an early post-season exit. On the contrary, they put the Penguins and Capitals away without the benefit of home ice advantage, including a sweep of the conference-leading Caps. Has this playoff performance been heavily influenced by luck? Let's look at how they scored their goals.

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Admit it. There have been times when you anxiously watch your team fight and battle for the puck when they're down a goal late in the game. Someone cranks a shot, people crash the net, and in the ensuing flurry of pushing, falling players and whacking, the puck somehow goes in. You stand up and cheer but deep down inside you realize that it was a lucky goal. If you can admit that much, read on to see how much of that contributes to NHL scoring.

Others have written about the role of luck in team shooting talent based on statistical methods. I wanted to investigate the same question through a completely independent method: by watching NHL goals with your eyes. I defined 3 distinct categories (observed skill, observed luck, and undetermined) and watched all NHL goals from March 25-29 which gave us 158 data points.

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How much more do GMs pay for a player who can play the point on the power play? Arguably every team needs someone with a great shot to play the point regardless of power play strategy, coaching strategy, or team's financial position. When the Atlanta Thrashers signed Dustin Byfuglien to an extension averaging $5.25M/year I initially thought that he was worth something more like $4.5M/year based on his skill. But we also had quite a hole to fill on the power play where Kovalchuk used to play the point. Was the extra ~$1M/year to fill that void? To answer that question I took a look around the league at power play point men and their contracts.

Edit: thanks for the comments everyone, if I can think of a good way to interpret this data further I'll post the results. This is an open question for anyone else to answer too!

I was interested in this question because the Thrashers tried a few things because their defense was so terrible in recent years. In 2008 I watched us trade for Mathieu Schneider from the Ducks and paid his ridiculous salary ($5.75/year!!!) for half a season all in a vein attempt to get a good shot from the point on the power play. You see, Schneider had a very dramatic-looking windup that made you think a bit shot was about to happen, but it was only average in terms of speed and terrible in terms of inaccuracy. Plus he was slow, a penalty magnet, and wasn't even good at breaking up 2-on-1's. It looked like we got him just for the point shot.

Then in 2009 we traded for Pavel Kubina along with his big contract ($5/year) but he was actually good in addition to filling the point shot position. Now we just extended Buff's contract, who is also good, at $5.25/year but I can't help but think: is there a pattern here?

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