Skip to main content

Goodbye to Broad Street

In the wake of Bobby Clarke's resignation in Philadelphia, I thought it would be interesting to dig up the total hits dished out by NHL teams last season, and throw that up against their regular season standings to see if there's any correlation between physicality and victory. By the looks of things, time has passed Mr. Clarke by, and hits don't bear any direct result on wins and losses.

The picture below (click to enlarge) outlines the total hits dished out by each team during the 2005-6 Regular Season, compared against their Regular Season point totals. As you can see, the distribution is pretty widespread, with physical leaders like Ottawa(!) and Dallas enjoying triple-digit totals in the standings, while being closely followed by Carolina and Buffalo, who were near the back of the pack in terms of hits. At the bottom end of the standings, you have a similar mix of hockey teams with various amounts of hits.

The correlation values are close enough to 0 to be basically irrelevant, with a result of -0.03 for Hits vs. Regular Season Points. A value of 1 means that the two statistics march up and down together perfectly, whereas a -1 means they move in completely opposite directions. Near 0, the value means there no specific relationship between the two. Edited for clarity 10/26/06.

Coming soon, a followup in this fashion looking at other portions of the game...

Popular posts from this blog

Cheer up, it's the holidays...

Why is it that various media outlets continue trying to put their own spin on the "what's wrong with the NHL" story? Our latest example comes from The Hockey News , in a piece by Jay Greenburg entitled, "Excitement Level On The Decline." Take the opening sentence: Attendance is down and yet still up from before the lockout, leaving it arguable whether buildings in New Jersey and Florida are half-full or half empty. It's no surprise that attendance is down from last season, particularly if you compare the first half of 2005-06 to the first half of this year. Coming out of the lockout, there were legions of fans starved to see the on-ice product, particularly in light of the massive rule changes. This year is more indicative of business as usual, so the fact that the league is above pre-lockout levels is a positive. Toss in the projection that overall revenues are increasing despite a 1% decrease in attendance, and I'd say that paying fans have come back
Read more

How I'm Trying To Make Money Sports Blogging

To kick off this series of articles general sports-blogging articles here at OTF Classic, I think it's best to start with a comment that Brad left here last week, after I shared my goals for 2012 , which include specific revenue targets: I considered diving into the world of internet marketing myself, but I felt that my friends would hate me for bugging them about stuff. I mean, it's pretty low-risk high-reward, so it's tempting. I wouldn't mind reading about tips on how to maximize impact of blogging in general to make it a legitimate income source. Trying to make money at sports blogging can be a very touchy subject - for the vast majority of us, this is an activity we pursue to both exercise our creativity and share our love of the game, whether it's hockey, football, badminton, whatever, with fellow fans. Mixing that personal conversation with a commercial message can turn people off, especially if it becomes too intrusive for the reader. It's not unrea
Read more

Celebrating a milestone month

I've been remiss in providing regular updates on my quest to turn this whole sports-blogging hobby into at least something of a significant side income, if not a career, but good news has a way of prompting action. That, and I've been heads-down busy working on a few different fronts to push things forward...
Read more