Developing an Analytics Program for Major Junior Hockey

• Activity Number: 316
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
• Author(s): Joshua Pohlkamp-Hartt* and Dave Riegert
• Companies: Queen's University and Queen's University
• Keywords: Hockey ; Analytics ; Coding ; Data Analysis ; Sports ; Management

Abstract

As the use of analytics grows in hockey at a professional level, we are seeing this shift in hockey culture trickle down to the junior level. With a set of unique challenges facing teams in the Canadian Hockey League, implementing an analytics program can be daunting. In conjunction with the Kingston Frontenacs we have developed an analytics program to meet the growing need for statistics in hockey junior hockey.

Providing an overview of the entire program from data collection to final model development and reporting, we will show how the use of statistical methods from machine learning, time series analysis, and quality control offer insight into player and team performance.

In addition to outlining the framework for the fundamental techniques used in hockey analytics, we will outline new methodology to further integrate statistics with hockey. Introduction of new statistics for neutral zone play, real time player quality monitoring and prediction of goal probabilities are highlights of the methods we will discuss.