Blog
Hockey arguments, priced in goals. The model shows its work — including what it gets wrong.
How the Flyers are using Michkov
Ten games in, Matvei Michkov is a specialist: full power play, no penalty kill, third-line minutes at 5v5 and offensive-zone starts. It is the same job as last year with less shelter and longer shifts, and the score, not the period, is what moves his ice time. The on-ice numbers are here for you to read either way.
The (Royal) Road Not Taken
The Flyers' power play creates chances and does not finish them: 86 goals on chances worth 122 over three seasons, the worst gap in the league by double. The NHL's tracking data points at what is missing. Over those three seasons the Flyers scored seven power-play goals off a pass across the middle of the ice, second-fewest in the NHL.
The Faceoff Tool
Simulate any NHL faceoff: pick two takers, click a dot, drop the puck. The same model behind the faceoff posts -- 1.2 million draws -- with every term of the prediction shown, and what winning the draw is actually worth.
Zegras at center: what his faceoffs would actually cost
He won 36% of his draws, worst on the team and below the worst regular taker in the league. Priced at what a won faceoff is worth, a full season of him taking every draw at center costs about two goals — a third of a win — and the bench already hedges half of it.
What is a faceoff worth?
0.0144 expected goals per won draw, measured with the model's own win probability standing in for a coin toss. Seventy extra wins make a goal, an elite center is worth about one a season — and faceoff ability is the most repeatable skill we have ever measured. Both things are true.
Model v3: the cascade
The xG model now asks three questions about every shot attempt: does it get through, does it hit the net, does it go in? Each stage gets its own player ratings, and that is how shot blocking became a number here.
Blocked shots, part 3: blocking is a skill, and it has a number
The series finale. The model asks "does it get through?" as its own question, finds a skill that repeats like goaltending — and converts it to goals: about one a season for the league's best, owned by exactly the players the shot-attempt ledger punishes.
Nick Seeler: good "defensive defensemen" are real, they're just rare
The stats have liked Seeler for a while; the thing he's famous for went unpriced. Price the blocking and he's a top-20 defensive defenseman — and the league's most extreme blocking specialist turns out to be a perfectly sound even-strength defender, exactly where critics predict drowning.
What is a 1D? The league's shape says it's a job, not a tier
Everyone sees the steep drop after the top defensemen and calls it a tier. A smooth, tier-free league produces that exact drop for free — and split into creating and suppressing chances, both halves of the job are slopes with no rung on them.
Blocked shots, part 2: putting them back where they came from
The NHL records a blocked shot where it died, not where it was born. How we recover the true origin from Edge tracking — and the two ways the fix fooled us before it worked.
Blocked shots, part 1: the case for the shot that never arrived
A quarter of all shot attempts never reach the net, and most xG models throw them away. Why they belong — the shooter's-eye argument — and the data problem that keeps everyone else from using them.
Believe the homecoming? What a 37-year-old legend has left
Patrick Kane is going home to Chicago at 37 on a two-year, $16M bet. Our aging curves say finishing only declines — and Kane's profile is the rare one where that's the good news.
Believe the breakout? What a single season is actually worth
The Flyers just made Jamie Drysdale their highest-paid defenseman on a four-year, $26M bet. Our model on whether it's a good one — a real defensive step, and the one-season noise that keeps it a bet.
Where does Trevor Zegras belong? Part 3: the answer is that there isn't one
The performance split, pre-registered before it was run — and the arithmetic showing that 60% of the NHL's forwards fit inside our margin of error. One season cannot answer this, for anyone.
Where does Trevor Zegras belong? Part 2: does the job change?
Before asking whether he's better at centre, ask whether centre is a different job. Ice time, teammates, competition, zone starts, score state — and the control that turns a 10-point finding into half a point.
Where does Trevor Zegras belong? Part 1: where he actually played
Before you can ask whether he's better at centre, you have to know which nights he played there. The data didn't say — so we built it, game by game, and we're publishing every row.
Remember Some Guys
A new daily puzzle: name the skater from the shape of their career.
Model v2: putting the players back in
v1 was deliberately talent-blind. v2 gives the model shooters, goalies, and teammates — measures what that buys, and ends up scoring the site.
The talent-blind baseline
The model that scores every shot in the tables — its structure, the reasoning behind it, and its honest scorecard.