Hockey Analytics: What Does It Mean For Cornell?

[marty]

Grosenick graduates writing hockey based thesis.

[billhoward]

Give Oates credit for doing this before online classes.

RPI great Adam Oates left Troy in 1985 for pro hockey and later got his degree in management, but he did it by returning to campus every summer for six years and physically sitting in a classroom. That's old school.

[Weder]

Interesting article on movement to detailed video analytics in ice hockey:  FiveThirtyEight article "The People Pushing the NHL Into the Advanced Stats Era"

...
Tracking by Schmidt and others has helped explain that a team's entry into the offensive zone has a big impact on its shot differential. Carrying the puck into the offensive zone leads to more than twice as many shots and goals as a dump-and-chase play does, even after removing plays like odd-man rushes and dump-ins that are made just to buy time for a line change. These results have even made an impact on strategy.

Schmidt's data from this season allows us to evaluate individual defensive contributions for the first time, which we couldn't do with traditional box scores.  ...

Dumb question: why have people tracking and recording visually?  Why not just stick an RFID on every player, stream the whole thing to a hard drive, and use software to analyze it?

But why not do it visually? You just have to record the entire rink. If intelligence satellites can have a resolution as fine as 10 cm, four rink-side cameras should be more than adequate.

Of course, if Redcast runs the cameras, all bets are off.

Even with the right camera setup and appropriate analysis, you'd still eventually wind up, more or less, with similar data to what you'd get through RFID tracking.  Why perform the extra steps if you don't need to?

Because you wouldn't have to perform the extra steps of outfitting the players and pucks with RFID devices.  Cameras and image processing software are way cheaper, and to a large degree, already exist at the rinks.

I don't know that the processing software is necessarily cheaper.  The NBA's system is patented and they (presumably) pay a licensing fee to use it.  Other companies also have patents and, I can tell you from firsthand experience, are actively developing technology in this area.  ESPN (i.e. Disney, known for aggressively protecting their IP), it seems to me, isn't likely to just let the NHL use their proprietary technology out of the goodness of their collective corporate heart.  (Not to say that they couldn't run into the same issues with an RFID-based solution, of course.)  There are also physical barriers to entry, albeit fairly low ones, in that the NBA's system uses dedicated cameras and implementing a similar system for hockey games would require its own cameras because of the larger field of view that needs to be covered.

But I see at least two advantages.

First, any individual program can implement a video solution, at least for home games. One doesn't need the agreement of the league, NC$$, etc.

Second, coaches watch film anyway. So besides possibly already having the equipment and raw material for analysis, consider the development process. Take, for example, crossing the blue line with the puck rather than dumping it in. The problem is there are all kinds of ways to cross the blue line with puck possession:
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• By hanging at the opponent's blue line and waiting to receive a long pass, as part of team strategy.
• By checking and causing a turnaround in the neutral zone.
• By beating a man in the neutral zone.
• By breaking out as a team from its own defensive end.
• Etc.

In order to decipher this and develop software able to distinguish important differences in variants of something as deceptively simple as crossing the blue line with possession, the developer will likely want to review videos in order to see what was really going on. One might even want a professional hockey coach to distinguish different situations. In the early development stages one would almost certainly want to compare the computer-analyzed data with visual examination of game films in order to ensure that the software is picking up all the important nuances, etc.

So since the developer is going to use video anyway, this approach seems more efficient.

That's a fair point I didn't really consider.  There are certainly added benefits to having the video that you don't get from a solely data-driven solution.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/stubborn-nhl-takes-tech-step-forward/article18595761/