Identifying Completed Pass Types and Improving Passing Lane Models

Radke, David; Brecht, Tim; Radke, Daniel

doi:10.3384/ecp191008

Cited by 3 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…In the future it would be interesting to extend the framework to model defensive actions and the possibility of shots being indirect passes. Similarly, considering banked and rimmed passes separately would likely improve the performance of pass-related models [9]. Another promising avenue of research would be to use graph-convolutional neural networks with tracking data snapshots, which has been shown to improve model performance over tree-based models and remove the need for advanced feature engineering [10].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a real-time possession value framework in ice hockey

Murto

2023

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

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Measuring the individual performance of players is an important task in sports analytics. Traditional statistics-based approaches for evaluating hockey players fail to account for context and long-term impact. Recent advances in data gathering have enabled valuing possessions and actions directly to address these issues. This talk describes the implementation of the first real-time possession value framework for ice hockey.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a real-time possession value framework in ice hockey

Murto

2023

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

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“…In a low-scoring game like football, these models provide insight into players' behaviors independently from offense and enables team building with diverse skills. Similar advancements in ice hockey have analyzed passing lane probabilities [17], as well as passing scenarios and pressure [12,13].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite the development of models that use PPT data in ice hockey, no previous work has analyzed passing models to help understand general distributions, trends, or differences among players in the NHL. In this paper, we calculate Analyzing Passing Metrics in Ice Hockey using Puck and Player Tracking Data Linköping Hockey Analytics Conference 2023 various passing metrics from recent work [12,13] for 1221 games of the 2021-2022 NHL season. We analyze the distributions of each metric among players at different positions and within each position.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This limited information makes constructing teams using quantitative evidence more difficult. The recent implementation of the puck and player tracking (PPT) systems in the National Hockey League (NHL) has led to several new metrics to quantify player behavior [12,13]. In this paper, we utilize a larger dataset to study how passing metrics can be utilized to understand the variance in behavior among players and players at different positions (metrics with larger variance may provide more opportunities to find under-valued players).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main motivation behind the development of passing metrics in ice hockey was to capture other player contributions that might not show up on a game sheet [12]. Understanding how players compare to each other within the distribution of passing metrics provides valuable context for team building and management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Analyzing Passing Metrics in Ice Hockey using Puck and Player Tracking Data

Radke,

Lu,

Woloschuk

et al. 2023

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings

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Traditional ice hockey statistics are inherently biased towards offensive events like goals, assists, and shots. However, successful teams in ice hockey require players with skills that may not be captured using traditional measures of performance. The adoption of puck and player tracking systems in the National Hockey League (NHL) has significantly increased the scope of possible metrics that can be obtained. In this paper, we compute recently proposed passing metrics from 1221 NHL games from the 2021-2022 season. We analyze the distributions of values obtained for each player for each metric to understand the variance between, and within, different positions. We find that forwards tend to complete fewer passes with smaller passing lanes, while defensemen pass to forwards significantly more than their defensive partners . Additionally, because these new metrics do not correlate well with traditional metrics (e.g., assists), we believe that they capture aspects of players’ abilities that may not appear on the game sheet.

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Spatial roles in hockey special teams

Arsenault,

Cunniff,

Tulsky

et al. 2024

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports

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Special teams (i.e. power play and penalty kill) situations play an outsized role in determining the outcome of ice hockey games. Yet, quantitative methods for characterizing special teams tactics are limited. This work focuses on team structure and player deployment during in-zone special teams possessions. Leveraging player and puck tracking data from the National Hockey League (NHL), a framework is developed for describing player positioning during 5-on-4 power play and 4-on-5 penalty kill possessions. More specifically, player roles are defined directly from the player tracking data using non-negative matrix factorization, and every player is allocated a unique role at every frame of tracking data by solving a linear assignment problem. Team formations naturally arise through the combination of roles occupied in a frame. Roles that vary on a per-frame basis allow for a fine-grained analysis of team structure. This property of the roles-based representation is used to group together similar power play possessions using latent Dirichlet allocation, a topic modelling technique. The concept of assignments, which remain constant over an entire possession, is also introduced. Assignments provide a more stable measure of player positioning, which may be preferable when assessing deployment over longer periods of time.

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Identifying Completed Pass Types and Improving Passing Lane Models

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Towards a real-time possession value framework in ice hockey

Towards a real-time possession value framework in ice hockey

Analyzing Passing Metrics in Ice Hockey using Puck and Player Tracking Data

Spatial roles in hockey special teams

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