Sharktistical Analysis: Skater Efficiency Ratings

by Matthew_Taylor on Nov 16, 2008 11:27 AM PST in Statistical Analysis

You could call me a visionary. You could call me a prophet. You could call me many things... but please, above all these wonderful things that you could potentially call me, call me modest. Because I am. I'm the most awesomely modest person in the universe.

That's why all the people saying that they love the Sharktistical Analysis posts has really inspired me to push it to the next level.

As a robot (since none of you have seen me... I'm going to try to get this rumor started), I love stats. But as a hockey fan, I feel gipped in the stats department. In many sports, comparison tools have been created to more easily measure the value of players. Nothing of the sort exists...until now.

While reading about John Hollinger and his NBA Player Efficiency Ratings, I decided that the idea would translate well to hockey. Using excel (my true love), I put together a formula that uses the following statistical categories to calculate a skaters per minute worth:

Games Played
Goals
Assists
Team Goals
Team Assists
Penalty Minutes
Power Play Goals
Power Play Assists
Short Handed Goals
Short Handed Assists
Face Off %
Game Winning Goals
Shots on Goal
Shooting %
+ / -
Average Time on Ice

I'm not going to go into detail on the formulas... I've learned how long my leash is, and how long your attention span is when reading about stats.

Here's how it works though. The formulas give a value to each statistic, adjusts them to be a per minute value, then adds them together and divides by the number of games played. So, for instance, even though Setoguchi has more goals than Marleau on the year, many could say that Marleau has been more valuable to the team. Marleau's SER is a high 13.81, while Setoguchi comes in at a healthy 9.05. Now, it's easy to see who is statistically superior (Sorry, Gooch).

Where the tool comes in very handy though, is in trade situations. It is much easier to compare players when we have a common ground to work from... and it's really fun to use.

I am willing to give the program to anyone who wants it. So shoot an email to me (link at the bottom of the main page) and I'll send it over. It's probably going to be revised a few times before it is perfected, but I'll keep ya'll updated. I'll also start throwing in SER to my articles... so be excited.

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