Month: January 2016

Having pointed out the problems with Hockey-Reference’s adjusted points formula and made the case for an improved version of adjusted scoring, it’s time to look at the question of where Alex Ovechkin should rank on the all-time list of goal scorers. As my title already gives away, when the era biases in the adjusted metrics are corrected, it turns out that Ovechkin’s numbers, while unquestionably outstanding, are no longer the best.

That on its own does not necessarily mean that Ovechkin isn’t #1. All scoring stats, adjusted or not, should be viewed in context, with understanding of a player’s usage, role and team situation. Ovechkin also has plenty of years ahead of him, and there is a reasonable case to be made that relative dominance is more difficult in the current era. I’ll show here why I think others are more deserving of the greatest of all-time mantle based on my adjusted goal calculations, but opinions can certainly differ. At the very least though, I hope that in the future any claims of Ovechkin being history’s greatest will be supported by more compelling evidence than links to Hockey-Reference adjusted goal totals. Continue reading “Why Alex Ovechkin Is Not The Best Goal Scorer Ever”

Hockey-Reference is a great resource for historical NHL data and quick summary statistics for players. The Play Index and detailed player splits are very useful, and the site has also added the kind of summary stats (particularly scoring and save percentage broken down by special teams) that once upon a time I used to go to NHL.com for before SAP ruined its usability.

One thing Hockey-Reference has not been as successful with is developing other stats, like player value metrics. Most people rightly see things like Point Shares and Goals Created as not adding a lot of value. However, one stat frequently cited and largely taken at face value within the analytics community is Adjusted Points (or Adjusted Goals, depending on what type of player is being talked about). I am certainly no exception, having made a case based on adjusted scoring in my last post.

I have heard it claimed that adjusted scoring was biased towards or against certain eras, but hadn’t ever looked at it myself in much detail until a number of articles started popping up suggesting that Alex Ovechkin might be the greatest goal scorer of all-time. Some of the exact same arguments have now been flaring up again in the wake of Ovechkin scoring his 500th career goal this past weekend.

What I found particularly interesting was that the cases being made were very heavily based on adjusted scoring. If there was indeed some statistical bias impacting that metric, it would likely affect any conclusions being made about Ovechkin’s potential GOAT scoring status, as well as any other cases made for or against other players based on their adjusted numbers. In this post, I’m going to outline the problems with the Hockey-Reference version of adjusted scoring, and then propose an alternate method.  In a future post, I’ll look at how my method stacks up in terms of evaluating historical players. Continue reading “The Problem With Hockey-Reference’s Adjusted Scoring”