It is well known that some NHL owners are in Gary Bettman's inner circle and wield significant power on the NHL's decisions, while others (such as the New York Rangers) are on the outs with the commissioner of the NHL. Probably the owner who wields the most power in the league right now is the Anschutz Group, headed by Phillip Anschutz, who owns the Los Angeles Kings. ...

One of the main stories this summer has been the development of the KHL as a major hockey league. There have been fights over players between the NHL and the KHL. The most prominent one is that of Alexander Radulov who might be interested in jumping back to the NHL. While the NHL has made a big case about Radulov jumping his contract to go to the KHL, there are other players under NHL

One of the longstanding fights between the NHL and NHLPA has been over pensions. This has been a constant battle throughout the NHLPA history. In the Alan Eagleson days of the NHLPA, most gains made by the union were in terms of pension benefits which Eagleson himself skimmed money from. These were promised benefits that were often never delivered. Eagleson often claimed that the NHL had the

The NHL and the upstart KHL are fighting over players international rights. Since there is no player transfer agreement teams have been able to sign players under contract in the other league with legal uncertainty surrounding the future of those players. One of the big KHL signings this summer was Alexander Radulov of the Nashville Predators who was signed by Saavat Yulaev of the KHL. The

One of the major hockey stories this summer has been the battle between the NHL and the KHL. Since there is no player transfer agreement, both leagues have claimed players have been signed by each other that were already under contract with the other league. Earlier this summer, both leagues agreed to respect each other's contracts but that agreement quickly fell apart as a KHL signing of

One strategy of the KHL to retain as much Russian talent as possible is to dispute the contract status of as many Russian players as possible who are transferring to the NHL. Even if a player does not have a clear contract for next season, when they sign with an NHL team, his contract status will be disputed. This strategy is clear with the Los Angeles Kings signings of Andrei Loktionov and

The long awaited Toronto Maple Leaf trade of Bryan McCabe was announced yesterday. McCabe and a 2010 4th round draft pick were traded to the Florida Panthers for Mike Van Ryn. McCabe is a pretty good hockey player. He made the second team all star in 2004. He is a very good offensive defenceman and a capable power play quarterback. He is prone to making some errors in the defensive zone and

Throughout its history, the NHL has tried to control its players and their hockey possibilities. This goes back at least as far as the original six days when teams could hold player's rights essentially in perpetuity, unless they traded them. On several occasions, players were blackballed from the NHL and had to continue their careers in the minors despite having displayed NHL ability. Over

Yesterday Adam Proteau of The Hockey News reported that Andrej Meszaros has agreed to an offer sheet with an undisclosed NHL team. Meszaros is an Ottawa Senator defenceman who has been unable to come to terms with the Sens this summer. He is a restricted free agent. So far, we have no confirmation of this story on the traditional hockey news sites such as nhl.com or tsn.ca. In fact, we

Much of the history of the NHLPA is a history of NHLPA bosses who enjoyed too close a relationship with the NHL bosses and thus compromised the integrity of the Player's Association. Alan Eagleson and John Ziegler were essentially golfing buddies who would agree upon future NHL bargaining agreements that suited the owners. The 2005 lockout looked like a break from this pattern...

In late June, I gave an All Star Team of players who were slated to be unrestricted free agents. Of the 23 players on the team, 20 have signed with teams in the NHL. Jaromir Jagr signed in the KHL and Joe Sakic and Mats Sundin seem likely to take sabbaticals for the first part of the season. Here is the team and who they signed with, along with their salary cap hits. Forwards: Sean Avery

I am attempting a rather large sabermetrics and hockey project where I attempt a novel method top look at +/- ratings. In order to do this, I need to know the amount of icetime players have with and against each other in 5 on 5 situations. Parsing this information from NHL boxscores is a non-trivial task. I found this tool to do it. It is a greasemonkey script that runs with Mozilla

Since The Hockey News Top 50 player list is out, here is my top 50 player list. I am posting it in the same format I did last year. I will list all the players, but only include comments on the top 10 players and on any players who made my list but were excluded from The Hockey News List. 1. Alexander Ovechkin He was the top scorer last year (both in total points and in points per game).

The Hockey News annual top 50 players list has been released and can be found here. These are my comments on each player in the rankings. 1. Sidney Crosby (1st last year). The question of whether to rank Crosby or Ovechkin first is one that leads to debate. Ovechkin stayed healthy last year and outscored Crosby (in total points and points per game). Ovechkin scored significantly more goals -

I have looked at the hockey sabermetrics problem of adjusting +/- ratings this summer. I have shown two methods to do this. One as a rate stat and one as a counting stat. It is clear that there is a lot of information in +/- ratings, but the interpretation of getting it out in a meaningful way is non-trivial. One way to look at the problem, which to my knowledge nobody has done, is to

In this summer's sabermetrics and hockey posts, I have been looking at the problem of on and off ice adjusted +/- ratings as set out by Gabriel Desjardins of behindthenet.ca. In order to show that the on/off ice adjustment is an improvement, I have looked at the effect of this adjustment on the offensive goals for average part of +/- ratings and showed that this adjustment...

It's an often stated line that "Coaches are hired to be fired". While this is often true, there are some meaningful exceptions (for example Jacques Lemaire and Barry Trotz have been the only coaches in the histories of their franchises), several coaches are replaced each season. It seems that poorly run teams tend to replace coaches a lot more than the more well...

In order to look at the biases of the sabermetric problem of adjusting +/- ratings using the on/off ice method, I thought I would apply it to a simpler problem. That of goals for average (GFA) (namely how many goals are scored per 60 minutes a player plays in 5 on 5 situations). As we have seen, the goals for average leaders are among the best offensive players in hockey and the worst GFA

Yesterday, I posted a hypothetical 2008 Canadian Olympic Hockey Team. Today, I will do the same for the Americans. This is the team of players who I would chose to represent USA if there was an Olympic hockey tournament right now: Goaltenders Rick DiPietro New York Islanders Ryan Miller Buffalo Sabres Tim Thomas Boston Bruins Defence Keith Ballard Florida Panthers Mike Komisarek Montreal

The Beijing Summer Olympics are underway. I thought I would make up a Canadian Olympic hockey team. These are the players I would put on a team if they played today. This is not a prediction for the 2010 Olympics where we imagine players are two year older than they are now and maybe some young players who are not Olympic ready have matured or that older players who are Olympic calibre today

We can calculate individual goals against averages and we can also calculate individual goals for averages. When a player is on the ice in a 5 on 5 situation and his team scores he gets credited with a goal for (even if he doesn't score or assist on it). This is another sabermetric method to find the best offensive players in the game. The statistic is somewhat team and...

I have written several sabermetrics and hockey posts this summer about adjusting +/- ratings. This is a useful method to rank NHL players. It is not an entirely simple or solved problem, but it is one that will likely lead to some sabermetric advances in the future. If we want to rank defensive values of players, it might be a more useful starting point to look at the number of goals scored

In my recent sabermetrics and hockey posts about on/off ice adjusted +/- ratings one group of players that keep coming up with unique stats is the Anaheim Duck checking line of Sami Pahlsson, Rob Niedermayer and Travis Moen. All three of them rank as one in the ten worst quality of teammates rankings and the ten best quality of opposition rankings. Anaheim is the only team currently in the

One issue to address in the sabermetrics and hockey problem of adjusting +/- ratings is the quality of teammates a player has. Since players will play different roles on their teams, different players will share ice time with different quality of linemates. Some players will play with better linemates than others. This will show up in their +/- rating. Players who play with better quality

The Detroit Red Wings are likely the favorites to win the Stanley Cup. They won the President's Trophy and have looked very good so far in the second round against Colorado. When a team wins the Stanley Cup, they usually require top level goaltending. It was expected that Detroit would depend upo...