Puck Talks: Engaging the Analytic Community
- Ian Boisvert
- Sep 25, 2016
- 2 min read
Image created by Bryce Durbin for techcrunch.com
While hockey analytics came to fame in a rather unorthodox fashion, today the analytics community organizes itself with the prospect of growing the science of analytics. Once a loose system of hockey bloggers with an affinity for statistical representations of the game they love, the analytics community has organized conferences and talks to discuss the evolution of analytics. The most well received of these conferences is the Rochester Institute of Technology Hockey Analytics Conference. The RITHAC held its second annual conference earlier this month, and the brightest minds in the analytic world came to upstate New York to discuss new trends in their areas of expertise.
As a method of analyzing the play of teams and players alike, analytics are based around mathematical models for what defines a good player or a good team. Once models are established, teams and players are graded against each other. Because these models are inherently subjective, discussing different techniques for creating models has become important in the progression of analytics.
Matt Cane, a contributor for hockey-graphs.com and manager of puckplusplus.com, presented a talk at the conference titled “Defending the Pass” and was able to offer some perspective on the growth of analytics in a Twitter interview during the conference on September 10th. When asked about the progress of analytics from the first conference to the most recent one, Cane said “I think we're getting a lot more detailed now. In the past there would be a lot of people presenting their own models for how to value players or how to tell which players are best. Now we're getting into more granular data (like tracked data from the passing project), more on-ice strategy focused talks, and more complicated modelling techniques.”
Cane’s sentiment indicates a period of rapid growth for the analytic community aimed at moving analytics into every day hockey discussion and analysis. The RITHAC’s efforts to bring the analytic community together are strengthening the community and creating a culture of innovation throughout the game of hockey.
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