Comments on: Book Review: Hockey Prospectus 2011-12

By: Kent Wilson

Kent Wilson — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:44:00 +0000

I understand your reluctance sicne I have some misgivings of GVT myself. However, with the addition of me, Jonanthan Willis and Ryan Popilchak, you’ll see a lot more discussion of possession, zone starts and situational awareness in this annual.

By: Neil, RMNB

Neil, RMNB — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:04:00 +0000

I don’t think it as heavy GVT-based as you think it might be. Nor do I think the HP guys ignore Corsi and other metrics all that often.

I agree the GVT metric has flaws (what metric doesn’t?) but overall it is a very good one-stat metric by which to evaluate players.

If nothing else, the book gives you insight into teams that are unavailable elsewhere and for anyone into hockey it is worth the money.

By: Mathieu

Mathieu — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 21:20:00 +0000

Even though I’m a stathead and I figure I’m part of the target audience, and I have a great deal of respect for several of the authors, I’m hesitant to buy the book because of my perception that it’s overreliant on GVT and GVT-derived metrics. GVT is fine for what it does, but it has a number of sizable blind spots (not distinguishing luck vs. ability, ignoring context such as strength of competition) that make it unsuitable for a number of purposes, such as evaluating how a player will do in a very different context (hi there, Ville Leino), my impression based on what they publish on their site is that they stretch it past the breaking point. To me this is a serious issue — evaluating D-men’s defensive prowess without considering their strength of opposition and offensive zone starts is misleading at best.

I’m also concerned about how much its GVT reliance overshadows Corsi-based research in its assessments. Corsi, Fenwick and other shot-based metrics underpin a great deal of what we know about how hockey works, but reading the Hockey Prospectus site, sometimes you’d barely realize they exist. Teams like Tampa and Montreal had massive turnarounds in their shot metrics that coincided with big opposite swings in percentages, leading to a relatively modest improvement in goal-differential — something I’m not sure GVT metrics capture well.

But that’s all my perception, sight unseen, based on reading up on their website. How does it measure up to reality?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:39:00 +0000

Thanks for the great review Neil. I wasn’t part of the first annual, but this one was a blast to contribute to.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:59:00 +0000

hey wait…