AHL- Apolyton Hockey League 08/09: Preseason

[mrboo123]

Oh and sorry about what happen with Yahoo. Parents came into town yesterday, forgot about the draft until I check hotmail about 5 mins before the auction started. They came in the morning about 5mins after the auction ended for me (when I got Burt).

Still, I'm happy with my team (goalies are a bit iffy, but not bad.)

[Kontiki]

The auction draft was crazy - I imagine if we do it again next year, it will turn out much different.

To recap, here's the list of players that sold for more than Crosby ($40):
Ovechkin
Iginla
Heatley
Malkin(!)
Gaborik
Hossa
Zetterberg
Phaneuf
Nabokov
Datsyuk
Thornton
Lecavalier
Lidstrom

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kontiki
The auction draft was crazy - I imagine if we do it again next year, it will turn out much different.

To recap, here's the list of players that sold for more than Crosby ($40):
Ovechkin
Iginla
Heatley
Malkin(!)
Gaborik
Hossa
Zetterberg
Phaneuf
Nabokov
Datsyuk
Thornton
Lecavalier
Lidstrom

Yup-- much different-- Crosby went cheap


But an auctiion seems like it can be a pretty wild ride-- I had players I wanted but passed when the bidding went too high-- Then I was sitting on too much cash for what was left and then was willing to bid high on the few of my bluechippers that were left.

There were lots of cheap deals at the end though-- heck with only 8 teams there are still some pretty good free agents out there

[Asher]

I'm not sure why you guys didn't bid on Crosby. I didn't even pay attention last year -- I had him and in fantasy terms he is usually overrated in terms of what you have to give up to get him (1st overall pick, etc).

If I'd noticed the bidding was at $40 and knew the others would sell for as high as they did, of course I'd have bid too. The whole auction process was just very weird since it was a feeling-out process. I'm glad it's not the "primary" league, but maybe next year it'll be more interesting now that we've all done it once.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Asher
I'm not sure why you guys didn't bid on Crosby. I didn't even pay attention last year -- I had him and in fantasy terms he is usually overrated in terms of what you have to give up to get him (1st overall pick, etc).

If I'd noticed the bidding was at $40 and knew the others would sell for as high as they did, of course I'd have bid too. The whole auction process was just very weird since it was a feeling-out process. I'm glad it's not the "primary" league, but maybe next year it'll be more interesting now that we've all done it once.

I was the same -- when I saw it was Crosby I made the mistake of assuming he would go insanely high and I allowed myself to get distracted with family for the moment and was surprised when I saw it was over

Then I was prepred to easily go 40 for the next few players but they all went really high

[notyoueither]

Let's get ready to ruummmmmble!

Flames vs Oiler rookies are playing in Camrose. It's being streamed by both team web sites.

It's hockey season!

[snoopy369]

Auctions are each different from each other - and I'd suggest that this one wasn't really that 'beginner', except in that there were some mistakes as to major players not getting out early enough. It is normal for the first top player to go for less than his followers, because once the first one is gone, the available number of top players is reduced, and there is more incentive to bid on the top players remaining - as well as the evidence for how high a player can go. Usually that first top player goes for a bit more relative to the others, but still for less than the next couple.

Nomination strategy was interesting in this one for sure - Flubber, for example, did the classic "nominate others' sleepers" for a bit, which is the common thing to do when you have a lot of money and others have less (nominate the folks they're hoping to get for $1 or $2, when plenty of people have cash for them).

I think that I ended up with a fairly good team, Boucher was really the only player I regretted bidding for (though a few of my middle round $20-$30 guys I could've gone a bit cheaper with, probably, like Mike Richards etc.); but I think to a large extent my trouble was mostly just hockey knowledge (I'm used to doing this where I have superior knowledge, ie MLB or NFL, not NHL where I know only a bit, and have to rely on rankings of other sites without knowing much context).

The thing I really miss is the degree of statistics that you can get for Baseball, in hockey. You can see a lot of stats, but the sheer number of statistics available for baseball is mindboggling, and things like VOR (value over replacement) is much harder to find for hockey, but present for baseball, usually at many different levels (including for fantasy). That makes fantasy drafting much easier, and either it's unavailable for hockey, or I couldn't find it for free at least...

[Asher]

My strategy was to nominate for positions I'd already filled. Eg, after I had two C I'd nominate some good Cs that I wouldn't get. The idea was it would drain the coffers of others then allow me to bid on the players I wanted later with little opposition at the high end. Not sure if it worked.

[Asher]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Auctions are each different from each other - and I'd suggest that this one wasn't really that 'beginner', except in that there were some mistakes as to major players not getting out early enough. It is normal for the first top player to go for less than his followers, because once the first one is gone, the available number of top players is reduced, and there is more incentive to bid on the top players remaining - as well as the evidence for how high a player can go. Usually that first top player goes for a bit more relative to the others, but still for less than the next couple.

Nomination strategy was interesting in this one for sure - Flubber, for example, did the classic "nominate others' sleepers" for a bit, which is the common thing to do when you have a lot of money and others have less (nominate the folks they're hoping to get for $1 or $2, when plenty of people have cash for them).

I think that I ended up with a fairly good team, Boucher was really the only player I regretted bidding for (though a few of my middle round $20-$30 guys I could've gone a bit cheaper with, probably, like Mike Richards etc.); but I think to a large extent my trouble was mostly just hockey knowledge (I'm used to doing this where I have superior knowledge, ie MLB or NFL, not NHL where I know only a bit, and have to rely on rankings of other sites without knowing much context).

The thing I really miss is the degree of statistics that you can get for Baseball, in hockey. You can see a lot of stats, but the sheer number of statistics available for baseball is mindboggling, and things like VOR (value over replacement) is much harder to find for hockey, but present for baseball, usually at many different levels (including for fantasy). That makes fantasy drafting much easier, and either it's unavailable for hockey, or I couldn't find it for free at least...

If you want more statistics for hockey, check out http://www.behindthenet.ca/

It's not quite mainstream yet, but the metrics are so useful that they're gaining traction. For instance, most people look at points per game (eg, he got 82 points in 82 games!). BehindTheNet has metrics to compare how these points were acquired -- how many EV, how many PP -- and most importantly, they become rates per minute of icetime. It also allows you to differentiate between first assist and second assist, quality of teammates, quality of linemates. For goalies you can break down stats as well between EV and PP, etc.

Here's the FAQ: http://www.behindthenet.ca/about_stats.html

[snoopy369]

Interesting. Still nothing close to what's available in baseball, but more than I'd seen before.

Is there a raw feed available somewhere? IE, for baseball I can literally get the full play-level-detail game log for every game that's been played since, hmm, as far back as I've ever looked (many decades, probably 1950s or even earlier). While that's not particularly interesting for me for hockey (or even baseball, really) what would be interesting would be a few years' worth of the data to run some stats of my own off of (particularly looking at year-to-year performance based on age, team, etc. - those are usually very hard to find (and don't appear to be on BTN, unless I missed that).

I don't even know what would be "play by play" for hockey or, rather, how that would translate to a database table; something like
Player - Team - Team Vs. - (Shot or Goal or Assist or Pass or Hit or Penalty or ... ) - time
I guess? The baseball tables are much less vertical than that, but baseball has a more predictable set of happenstances off any given play.

[Asher]

There's no realtime feed that I know of. All of this information is algorithmically taken from the nhl.com statistic feeds nightly.

The public NHL data per game is as follows (from a sample game), and these are updated in "real time":

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/GS030224.HTM

http://www2.nhl.com/nhl/app?service=page&page=Boxscore&gameNumber=224&season=20072008&gameType=3

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/PL030224.HTM

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/RO030224.HTM

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/ES030224.HTM

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/FC030224.HTM

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/TV030224.HTM

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/TH030224.HTM

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/SS030224.HTM

Another website I regularly use is timeonice.com. It gives me an idea of player match ups in the game, as well as lines and how they may change during the game. Eg, for the above game, here's the shift chart:

http://www.timeonice.com/default.html?GameNumber=30224&submit=Go

The problem is the site is very "manual". You need to input the 5-digit game number from the nhl.com stats page to get this data, but it's up to the minute of a game in progress: http://www.timeonice.com/

So there's lots of statistics up there (yes, I know not like baseball). You just need to know where to look and want to get your hands dirty. There's actually a great series of articles going on at this blog: http://battleofalberta.blogspot.com/

It's a lot of back and forth on the worth of advanced statistics in hockey. It's basically the bloggers vs David Staples (mainstream media hockey journalist in Edmonton).

[notyoueither]

It doesn't work, snoopy.

Baseball is a very easy game to do stats for. The play starts, changes, and stops with a very limited number of outcomes and stats to keep.

Hockey starts when the puck drops and then... change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change, change...

With turnovers, hits, takeaways, shots, more hits, a giveaway, more shots, further turnovers and hits...

and finally a whistle that came about because of a goal, a penalty, or the puck out of play.

Too many important things are subject to judgement, and too many of them happen too fast for baseball like stats keeping.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Nomination strategy was interesting in this one for sure - Flubber, for example, did the classic "nominate others' sleepers" for a bit, which is the common thing to do when you have a lot of money and others have less (nominate the folks they're hoping to get for $1 or $2, when plenty of people have cash for them).

I didn't know I HAD a strategy--let alone that I adopted a classic . But yes I was nominating players I did not want so reduce cash and fill roster spots of others-- When I wanted a LW I would nominate a LW I did not want in the hopes that someone else in need of a LW would take themselves out of the running for my preferred guy

Originally posted by snoopy369
Auctions are each different from each other - and I'd suggest that this one wasn't really that 'beginner', except in that there were some mistakes as to major players not getting out early enough.

I didn't think that was a mistake. I was hoping even more of the big players would be overlooked until a lot of the big spenders were low on cash. But I regret not ponying up more for some of the elite forwards

Originally posted by snoopy369
It is normal for the first top player to go for less than his followers, because once the first one is gone, the available number of top players is reduced, and there is more incentive to bid on the top players remaining - as well as the evidence for how high a player can go. Usually that first top player goes for a bit more relative to the others, but still for less than the next couple.

Now that you say it, it makes sense about the timing but going in I really thought that Crosby was the one guy someone would bid their brains out on-- It seemed like the whole group adjusted almost immediately after that and the prices were significantly higher for elite forwards for a little while

Originally posted by snoopy369


I think that I ended up with a fairly good team, Boucher was really the only player I regretted bidding for (though a few of my middle round $20-$30 guys I could've gone a bit cheaper with, probably, like Mike Richards etc.); but I think to a large extent my trouble was mostly just hockey knowledge (I'm used to doing this where I have superior knowledge, ie MLB or NFL, not NHL where I know only a bit, and have to rely on rankings of other sites without knowing much context).

I think your team is just fine-- Its far better on the top end statistically than mine while mine should have stronger d ( I have a lot of hopes for Green quarterbacking that Capitals PP) and bench/middling players-- I hope my goalies kick butt-- I do think lack of hockey knowledge can be compensated a lot by good stats tools available and if you look at enough of the rankings, you won't go far wrong-- And some of its pure guess anyway . ..

I saw Alex tanguay in Calgary last year and the guy, while a bit of a creampuff, is offensively gifted, far beyond what last years numbers show-- neither Nolan or Conroy were good scorers-- I'm betting with a top offense like Montreal and a coach that might play him on the top lines . .. he'll fill the net-- But maybe the new coach hates his non-hitting ways and relegate him to the PK like Keenan did-- who knows? Does Brian Campbell flourish in Chicago? etc etc

[Flubber]

Oh and snoopy I don't think that hockey will ever be quite as statistical as baseball or football. Both games are played in very short flashes of time with a limited number of possible results--

Hockey is on a play by play basis, much more variable and IMHO much less capable of being reduced to numbers

[snoopy369]

http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20072008/PL030224.HTM

That link is largely what I'm thinking of, though it's probably not easy to parse (too much english parsing required in the important 'event' field). I don't necessarily care about 'real time' data, in the sense of getting it right away ... even in baseball usually you would just use something that is days or even a year old (last year's data), since you're mostly trending data rather than talking about one or two games. Maybe someone has collected these somewhere - I'll have to look around.