The Puck Stops Here

Last summer, I wrote a series of posts on sabermetrics and hockey. My basic conclusion is that although it is an interesting subject, hockey is not a sport that easily lends itself to sabermetic analysis. The statistics kept do not tell enough of the story in a game.

Nevertheless, I looked at a couple ranking systems for players. One produced by pnep and one produced by Daryl Shilling. I compared and contrasted their lists of the top 10 forwards of all time and the top 10 defencemen of all time. I introduced Pnep's goaltender ranking system (Shilling does not have one on the level of this system) and discussed several discrepancies between the two methods (ie Doug Harvey and Bobby Hull).

I figure this is a topic for the off season, since too much is going on in the regular season to get much chance at addressing it. It is off season now and likely the biggest free agent signings, trades etc. have already occurred, so now is the time to return to the topic. I thought I'd give new readers since last summer a bit of a chance to see what I have written and where I am coming from before diving into a otpic I have mostly abandoned for a year (so if it interests you check out the links).

More entries on sabermetrics and hockey are coming in the next couple of months.