Which, I guess might be 2/3 of the ELFers? Anyways, while driving to a CPR class on Saturday (yes, I am now certified to save an adult life), I heard this interview on NPR's Sat. Edition (6/6/09) (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105064989) about Mike Smith (Clarkson grad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Smith_(ice_hockey_b._1945))) who is a co-founder of a hockey stats company (http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/26207-Mike-Smiths-Blog-Analytics-provide-extra-layer-of-infoto-those-who-want-it.html) that analyzes how teams and players do on the PP, PK and when the game is close or out of hand.
I'm not sure what can be gleaned from the college hockey box scores compared to the NHL boxes, but it might be interesting to see how the college players (ECAC's in particular) rank in terms of these parameters.
I like the idea, but the article rubs the statistician in me the wrong way for 2 reasons:
1) He claims that in the first 4 seasons their business was available 17/20 client teams made the playoffs, and hence their using this product helped them reach the playoffs. This is making quite an assumption in causality - I find it just as likely that the teams that were already doing well were the sort looking for some technical edge and trying new ideas.
2) I like the idea of finding performance statistics for unique situations - conditional probabilities such as "how does this player perform when down by 1 goal in the 3rd period". This may very well give some useful information. What I don't think this will be able to capture is a question such as "how does this player perform in a critical situation with the SEASON on the line". For example: a critical playoff game. The reason is that these situations just don't come up enough - you'll never have a large enough sample to draw meaningful conclusions. Sometimes there just isn't a substitute for a good coach's/GM's intuition.
That being said, does anyone know of a database of raw college hockey numbers? I'd love to crunch some numbers myself for fun. I looked back in the winter but couldn't find anything. Maybe I'll go bug that KRACH guy...
Old line baseball thought it was cold, heartless, and useless to go deep in analyzing, signing, and trading players.