Pucks and Paws

RIT Hockey Data Visualizations, Advanced Stats, Memes, and More

Analysis

RIT Hockey Week 4 Recap

By

Men’s Hockey

10/24/2019 – Air Force – Away – Win (2-1)

TL;DR

Logan Drackett made 42 saves on 43 shots while Cameron and Gonsalves scored RIT’s goals.

Prediction Results

Pucks and Probabilities predicted a loss for the Tigers (though it was really a “toss up” with less than 3% difference between AF and RIT).

There isn’t really much to say about this game that couldn’t be summed up by Wayne Wilson’s post game quote.

“We have played some great games out here before, but that was about as bad as we could play tonight.” said RIT head coach Wayne Wilson
. “We had a couple of good moments, and our penalty-kill was pretty good, but Drackett was the main reason we got the win.”

Steve Jaynes – Director of Athletic Communications

10/25/2019- Air Force – Away – Win (1-0)

TL;DR

Drackett made 36 saves in a shutout effort. RIT sweeps Air Force in Colorado for the first time ever.

Prediction Results

After adjusting for the previous game, Pucks and Probabilities predicted a win. So far the model is 50% accurate.

Other Thoughts

Logan Drackett was once again phenomenal early in the 2019-2020 season, stopping all 36 shots he faced to earn his second shutout of the year while Jake Hamacher scored the lone goal in the RIT win.

The only other notable event from the weekend was the ejection of Adam Brubacher in Saturday’s game for a contact to the head penalty. Per Rule 29 of the 2018-19 and 2019-20 NCAA Ice Hockey Rules & Interpretations, Brubacher could be faced with supplementary discipline.

Atlantic Hockey has a habit of suspending players after taking major contact to the head penalties.

If suspended, Brubacher will likely face a one-game ban that will be served during Friday’s home opener against Holy Cross.

Atlantic Hockey Fancy Stats Dashboard

Power Ranks: There weren’t any big changes to the power rankings this weekend. RIT has moved up above Air Force and Army into 4th place after sweeping Air Force this weekend.

Shot Share/Shot Rates: Despite the results (and the exception of the Merrimack game) RIT has not been good. They have been getting dominated in possession, shot generation, and chances. Luckily for them Logan Drackett has been playing out of his mind.

xGDIF60: At the moment RIT is the only team managing a positive xGDIF, mostly due to the play of Logan Drackett who couldn’t give up a bad goal if he wanted to at the moment.

Puck Luck: It is no surprise to see RIT pulling away in the “Lucky” section. Goaltending has been phenomenal and the forwards have been able to finish the few chances they have had.

Women’s Hockey

10/25/2019 – Brown – Home – Win (6-0)

TL;DR

Jessi O’Leary dominates with a 37 save shutout, the first of her collegiate career.

Prediction Results

Brown is not a conference opponent, so Pucks and Probabilities did not make a prediction.

The offense exploded, scoring three even strength and three power play goals – four goals in the first period.

First year players Goff, Nolan, and Pietrowski all scored for the Tigers. Once again highlighting the importance of offensive production from newcomers with the graduation of over a third of their scoring the previous season.

10/26/2019 – Brown – Home – Win (4-2)

TL;DR

Goff continued her success, scoring 2 goals. O’Leary made 26 saves for her second straight win.

Prediction Results

Brown is not a conference opponent, so Pucks and Probabilities did not make a prediction.

College Hockey America Fancy Stats Dashboard

Power Ranks: A little jockeying going on this week with Penn State, Syracuse, and RIT all jumping up one spot at the expense of Robert Morris’ and Lindenwood’s poor weekend.

Shot Share/Shot Rates: RIT continues to be decidedly *not good* and as such relies heavily on their goaltender.

xGDIF60: Mercyhurst is the only team managing a positive xGDIF while the rest of the conference plays catch up.

Puck Luck: Mercyhurst is saving shots and shooting them at slightly above average rates, while the rest of the conference is struggling one way or another. RIT and Lindenwood are seeing good performance from their goaltenders and are failing to shoot well, Robert Morris is shooting well but can’t stop anything, and Penn State and Syracuse are below average all around.

RIT Hockey Week 3 Recap

By

Men’s Hockey

10/19/2019- Merrimack – “Neutral” – Win (4-0)

TL;DR

The offense dominated first-year Merrimack goalie Troy Kobryn while Logan Drackett’s stellar play earned him a shutout.

Prediction Results

This wasn’t a conference matchup so the Pucks and Probabilities model didn’t make a prediction.

Thoughts

Coming off the high of competing against nationally ranked schools in the Ice Breaker Tournament (their defeat of Bowling Green knocked BGSU out of the USCHO poll and earned RIT some votes to be included in the rankings), RIT continued their impressive play against an in-transition Merrimack team.

The scoring would indicate a game that was much more in favor of RIT than the reality of the game. Both RIT and Merrimack had somewhat even possession and shot attempt numbers (43 total shot attempts each) and each team had similar on-net, block, and missed shot numbers.

The difference came in the form of Logan Drackett who has been phenomenal through the first 4 games of the season, stopping 122 of 128 shots faced for a .953 save percentage and 1.50 goals against average.

Women’s Hockey

10/18/2019- Mercyhurst – Away – Loss (4-2)

TL;DR

RIT pulled within one early in the third, however their efforts to tie were thwarted when Mercyhurst scored an empty net goal with 40 seconds left.

Prediction Results

Heading into Friday the model gave Mercyhurst a 72% chance of winning. It was “successful.”

10/19/2019 – Mercyhurst – Away – Loss (6-0)

TL;DR

Special teams killed the Tigers, with 2 GA coming on the PP and 2 GA coming short handed. Lanteigne was pulled in favor of O’Leary 3/4 through the 2nd. Both goalies gave up 3.

Prediction Results

After the defeat on Friday night, the PNP model only became more weighted toward Mercyhurst. The prediction was a “success.”

Thoughts

There isn’t really much else to say, Mercyhrust is a much better team than RIT and it showed. It remains a shame that the Women’s team does not have a dedicated Brick City Homecoming game as they previously had.

RIT Hockey Week 3 Preview

By

Men’s Hockey

Games

  • 10/19/2019 – Merrimack – “Home.”

Predictions

Merrimack is a non-conference opponent so Pucks and Probabilities isn’t being used.

Thoughts

Logan Drackett and the men’s team put on an impressive showing against two nationally ranked opponents last week (beating Bowling Green and losing to Ohio State) in the Ice Breaker Tournament.

Merrimack, on the other hand got absolutely stomped by Wisconsin (15) 11-5 at home before beating Holy Cross 3-1 in the odd Thursday night game this week.

As I said at the start of the season RIT would need Drackett to continue playing well and would need early contributions from their freshmen forwards. So far both of these have happened and RIT has enjoyed some early success in part because of it.

The men’s team will need the same performance to beat a Merrimack team that is looking to continue their rebound after a number of early season defeats.

Women’s Hockey

Games

  • 10/18/2019 – Mercyhurst – Away
  • 10/19/2019 – Mercyhurst – Away

Predictions

Pucks and Probabilities has Mercyhurst at a 72% chance to win heading into Friday night’s game.

Thoughts

Starting conference play without a win on the year isn’t ideal, but it is a perfect time for the team to step up and earn points where it matters – the conference standings.

Despite not winning a game so far, the women’s team has had some early successes – the goaltending of Terra Lanteigne and the involvement of freshmen skaters in all facets of the game.

Pucks and Probabilities has Mercyhurst at a 72% chance of winning. The numbers don’t look good, but the games this weekend should at least be competitive.

Introducing: College Hockey America Fancy Team Stat Dashboard

By

The Dashboard

Interactive Visualization: College Hockey America Fancy Team Stats

The College Hockey America Fancy Team Stat Dashboard contains statistics that and measures that are relevant to analyzing a team’s performance.

Power Ranks

These Power Ranks are determined using the Pucks and Probabilities model for College Hockey America. The model factors in a number of different statistics, measures, and performance indicators including some that are featured on this dashboard.

You can view the Pucks and Probabilities model here.

These rankings are not indicative of the team’s standings position or record. They are simply a way to visualize which teams are having good results in certain metrics.

Context: Robert Morris had a dominant weekend against Union while the rest of the CHA struggled to produce results outside of Lindenwood securing a 3-2 W against Bemidji. Due to the lack of data this early in the season and the crazy variance in the quality of competition, it’s hard to look at the power ranks and take anything meaningful away (yet).

xGDIF60

Expected Goal Differential per 60 is represented by “daggers.” The top value of the dagger is a team’s expected goals for (xGF60) while the bottom value of the dagger is a team’s expected goals against (xGA60), both represented in terms of 60 minutes of play. The shading of the dagger shows the intensity of the differential.

Context: Outside of Robert Morris going off, the remaining CHA teams have abysmal xGDIF rates. This should almost definitely change as the schedule picks up and more data is fed into the visualization.

Shot Share

The Shot Share graph is one way that you can infer a team’s ability to possess the puck. In general a team that generates a higher percentage of the shots in a game will have possessed the puck more.

The bar graph is representative of the shot differential for a team while the shading of the bars shows the goal differential.

Context: Typically a team that generates more shots will score more goals than their opponents (Robert Morris), however this graph does a good job showing that while you may control play over the course of a weekend, you may still get beaten (Syracuse).

Shot Rates

Shot Rate is just a fancy way of comparing the number of shots for and the number of shots against per 60 minutes for each team.

Ideally a team would be in the upper right quadrant (vertical axis reversed) with a high shots for rate and a low shots against rate per 60 minutes.

Context: This is a similar graph to the shot share in that it shows how well a team controls play by inferring possession based on shooting metrics. Once again we see Robert Morris in the top right having crushed their competition in Week 1 while Lindenwood and RIT got caved in in shot generation.

Puck Luck

Puck Luck, or PDO, is the combination of a team’s shooting percentage and a team’s save percentage. The theory is that teams will end up around “1.” A team with a PDO above 1 can consider themselves lucky, while a team with a PDO below 1 could be considered unlucky.

Context: This is a decent indicator of how “lucky” a team has been. In week 1 Robert Morris had stellar play from their goaltender and had a high shooting percentage, placing them in the top right “lucky” quadrant. While RIT didn’t manage to win a game, their (let’s be real, Emily Stemple’s) ability to score goals on few chances pushed them to the border of the “lucky” quadrant.

RIT Hockey Week 2 Preview

By

Men’s Hockey

Games

  • 10/11/2019 – Bowling Green – Away
  • 10/12/2019 – TBD – Away

Predictions

They won’t be playing any conference opponents in the Ice Breaker tournament, so Pucks and Probabilities will be sitting this one out.

Thoughts

RIT has been invited to participate in 2019’s Ice Breaker tournament, hosted by Bowling Green at the Huntington Center in Toledo, OH. This will be the first time RIT has participated in the tournament.

RIT faces Bowling Green first, a team who despite going through a coaching change late in the Summer, is ranked nationally (17, USCHO and 1, Pairwise). It will be a difficult test for the Tigers who required great goaltending to beat Colgate to open the season.

RIT will face either Ohio State (12, USCHO) or Western Michigan (14, USCHO)

Women’s Hockey

Games

  • 10/11/2019 – St. Cloud State – Home
  • 10/11/2019 – St. Cloud State – Home

Predictions

St. Cloud is not a conference opponent, so Pucks and Probabilities is sitting in the press box again for this week.

Thoughts

It’s hard to judge this early in the season what to expect from a non-conference matchup who play in wildly different conferences.

RIT had a decent showing against UVM, going 0-1-1 last weekend while St. Cloud State sits at the bottom of their standings at 0-2-0 having been beaten twice by nationally ranked Ohio State (8).

The Tigers will need to generate more scoring chances while keeping themselves out of the penalty box if they want to head into their first weekend of conference play with a win.

Women’s Week 1 Power Ranks

By

The first weekend of College Hockey America games are in the books, and with that comes updates to the Pucks and Probabilities Power Ranks.

Disclaimer

There have been very few games in general. Some teams have only played once while others have played twice. I don’t account for quality of competition – Penn State going against defending champions Wisconsin is a bit different than RIT facing UVM. Basically, it’s early in the season. Things will change.

Meeting Expectations

Robert Morris continues to be good and as such remained in the top spot heading into Week 2.

Mercyhurst played well against Colgate, but ultimately suffered a loss and tie – keeping them within the 2/3 spot.

Syracuse fell in the rankings after losing three straight to start the season.

Unexpected Gains

RIT moved from 6 all the way to 2, largely on the stellar goaltending from Lanteigne who made 71 total saves this weekend.

Lindenwood had tough competition but was able to get good goaltending from Asplundh who made 40 saves on against Bemidji on Saturday.

Improvements

I definitely need to figure out how to adjust for goaltending and/or quality of competition. Penn State was always going to get worked by the defending National Champions. They shouldn’t be pushed to last in the rankings simply because that happened.