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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
Hockey fans are now able to see which NHL players are among the league’s fastest (and slowest) — and not just at the All-Star skills competition.
“Top Skating Speed” is one of a dozen advanced analytics tabulated on the NHL EDGE stats site. It’s the league’s new clearinghouse for puck and player tracking data, published for public consumption for the first time. Provided the public has the patience to consume it.
Finding out who’s the fastest forward in the NHL? Pretty easy. The top 10 players for each NHL EDGE analytic are updated on the front page of the stats site. We know that Winnipeg Jets center Rasmus Kupari hit 23.95 mph in the second period of an Oct. 17 game against the Los Angeles Kings, putting him at the top for “Top Skating Speed” this season.
Finding out who has the lowest “Top Skating Speed” this season is not as easy. It took me over two hours, searching player by player, pulling down each menu around 450 times, to determine that Travis Boyd of the Arizona Coyotes topped out at just 19.53 mph, the slowest “top speed” of any NHL forward through Monday’s games.
That’s a lot of effort to find a Travis Boyd stat, if we’re being honest.
NHL EDGE gives us some context about Kupari that we don’t get for Boyd. The Jets forward’s top speed puts him in the 99th percentile among all NHL forwards. But for below-average skaters like Boyd, their percentile is listed as “Below 50th” in that category — the same designation given to any player who is under the 50th percentile for any NHL EDGE analytic.
To be clear, it’s not like this for traditional on-ice stats. I can find out in a matter of seconds who has the worst plus/minus rating in the NHL: Forward Filip Zadina with a minus-14, one of many, many San Jose Sharks currently in contention for that dishonor. Zadina is not “Below 50th” among peers. He’s last overall, out of 699 players. In another sport, ESPN’s QBR stat for NFL quarterbacks readily showcases the best and worst in the metric.
As it happens, the NHL made an intentional decision not to showcase negative analytics on the EDGE site.
“It is by design,” said Russ Levine, NHL group vice president of stats and info, when I asked about the “Below 50th” designation on the player pages. “We want to emphasize top performers and performances.”
This got me thinking about how we got here with puck and player tracking, as well as what fans can and can’t see, and how those stats are being used by teams.
THE NHL AND the NHLPA can be very sensitive about creating negativity around their players. The NHL’s website doesn’t traffic in “worst” lists, nor do the NHLPA player surveys. Concerns about public criticism of players helped drive this season’s ban on pregame specialty jerseys. Years ago, that sensitivity caused a change in the NHL All-Star Game format, because they didn’t want players ridiculed for being selected last in the game’s “fantasy draft.”
(Hey, at least the last pick got a new car. The slowest skater doesn’t … although one assumes they could use some fresh wheels.)
The NHL and NHLPA made an agreement a few years ago on how to use puck and player tracking data collected by NHL EDGE. That data has always been treated with a level of sensitivity. It’s not used in arbitration cases, but can be used in contract negotiations. The data can’t be monetized without the players signing off on it first — hence, we’ve yet to see “how far will Connor McDavid skate in this game?” player props with the NHL’s sportsbook partners.
I remember speaking with former NHLPA executive director Don Fehr on several occasions about wearable technology and the data it would produce.
There were obvious non-starters for the NHLPA. For example, the National Rugby League had allowed the media to view the heartrate of a player during a tournament-winning kick. That would not be permitted for NHL storytelling purposes.
“Biometric data is player-personal, health-related and in our view, owned [by the players],” said Fehr, who has since been replaced by Marty Walsh as the head of the NHLPA.
When it came to on-ice stats generated by tracking technology, Fehr said players were also concerned.
Mediocre traditional stats can be contextualized in a variety of ways, including whether the team around a player contributes to their on-ice struggles. But things like shot speed and skating speed are more specific to an individual player’s skills. Quantified over time, they could paint a potentially embarrassing picture for a player.
“The push to quantify everything, without knowing what those quantities mean … for example, if I saw you’re skating slower than you did three years ago, does that mean your play is better or worse? Can you not keep up anymore?” Fehr said.
“There are some people that are concerned about making additional information available. Sometimes you hear from people who would say, ‘Look, I know what my job is, and if I’m a half second slower than I was two years ago, as long as I’m there when I’m supposed to be, what’s the difference?'”
The difference on the ice might be minimal, but the difference in public perception could be considerable, according to a player agent.
“You’re probably correct that the PA didn’t want players to be embarrassed by certain stats,” they said. “Lumping it into the bottom 50% was a way to do that. You’re not really telling anybody anything about their performance.”
Said another agent: “I guess they just don’t want to do that. There’s enough data out there that they don’t have to label any one person as clearly the slowest skater or something like that.”
My understanding is that the NHLPA did not ask the NHL to deemphasize potentially embarrassing analytics on the NHL EDGE site. However, the way the NHL framed its approach to that data is consistent with how the NHLPA would prefer these stats are presented: Best used to focus on the positive skills that the players display on the ice, rather than the negative.
“I think they positioned it the right way,” one NHL veteran player said when I asked about NHL EDGE. “It could be a negative factor that you want to protect the players from. There’s a lot of positives about it, but there’s a lot of negatives, depending on how you use the information.”
ROB BLAKE IS a Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman and the general manager of the Los Angeles Kings. He said he could understand why negative performances are being deemphasized on NHL EDGE.
“As protection for the players, I can see that if that’s their reasoning,” Blake said.
The biggest problem Blake had with the way the stats are presented on NHL EDGE: context.
“When you look at that website, it says the guy hit 25 miles an hour. It doesn’t tell you much else about what happened in the game,” he said.
For example, why was the player skating so fast? Was it on an offensive rush that produced a goal? Was he hauling his keister back to the defensive zone after a turnover he made at the other end of the ice?
“You can look up players and be like, ‘This guy sucks, look at his max speed.’ But there’s a fine line there when it comes to analytics,” one current NHL player said. “How much of it is a byproduct of the team he’s playing on as opposed to the player himself?”
It’s important to remember that the NHL EDGE site is Version 1.0 for making puck and player tracking data available to the public. There will be more stats added. There will be further refinement of how the data is collected. Perhaps, in time, that context will become a part of the total picture of player performance.
“With this site launch, we wanted to put the focus on top performers and performances, but we are very much at the beginning of the process,” the NHL’s Levine said. “The stats that are made available from NHL EDGE will continue to evolve and expand.”
Hopefully, making the bottom end of these categories easily accessible, and explaining their context, is part of that evolution.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has said that analytics provide hockey fans with “great storytelling, great fodder for discussion.” That’s absolutely true. But if you’re going to give us the best, give us the worst, too. We can be as fascinated by failures as we are achievements, and sometimes more so. There are as many fans ogling the dynamic start for the Vegas Golden Knights as there are the horrific one for the San Jose Sharks, for example.
It’s not all about ridicule. The negative aspects of some players’ games add context to the positive ones. Sam Reinhart of the Florida Panthers is one of the top goal-scorers in the NHL this season. His top skating speed of 21.06 is in that “Below 50th” category. Knowing the context for that speed, and what percentile he falls into, tells a better story for this juxtaposition between skating and scoring.
“What’s interesting is that the teams are having their analytics departments trying to decipher what’s valuable information,” Blake said. “Like, if you aren’t the fastest skater, but you’re a real good player, what’s going on there?”
But if it is about ridicule — and knowing some NHL fans, it’ll inevitably be about ridicule — there’s something important to note here: Players don’t care if we think they’re slow or their shot is weak or any other potentially uncomfortable metric NHL EDGE can chronicle.
“It’s not an embarrassment factor. I think guys would kind of joke with one another about it,” one player said when I asked about making these stats more search-friendly.
We’re searching for stats. They’re creating them. That’ll always be the difference.
“Everybody compared to Connor McDavid is going look slow. But you’re playing in the NHL. You’re in the best league in the world,” one NHL veteran said. “You’re obviously doing something right.”