Rob Vollman's Blog

Summer Hiatus

Even though I haven't posted any new thoughts in this section since the regular season ended, and my weekly columns on ESPN Insider and NHL.com are on hiatus for the summer, that doesn't mean that I've been idle. I've updated all the data in the downloads section, I've been hard at work on the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update, my weekly radio spot on TSN 1290 is still on-going, and I'll be participating in the NHL's 31-in-31 feature series in August again this year.
I've also continued to comment o...

This year's overachievers

Who are this year's greatest overachievers? As one way of answering that, I compared everyone's points (as of March 15) to their three-year average points per game multiplied by the number of games they have played. 
I found that William Karlsson, Nathan MacKinnon, and Mikko Rantanen were on top, and ahead of the pack.
+42.9 W. Karlsson+42.0 MacKinnon+39.2 Rantanen+29.4 Perron+29.0 Bailey+28.6 Marchand+28.0 Kucherov+27.5 Couturier+27.1 Haula+27.0 Hall+26.6 Marchessault+25.5 R. Smith+24.9 Terava...

2018 Trade Deadline

So, the February 26 trade deadline has come and gone, and I've had some time to consider my reaction to some of the more notable moves.
I think Ottawa did well in trading Derick Brassard (with Vince Dunn and a third-round pick) to the Penguins in a three-team deal that netted them goalie prospect Filip Gustavsson, defensemen Ian Cole (who was subsequently traded to Columbus for a third-round pick and prospect Nick Moutrey) a first-round pick, and a third-round pick. That's a pretty good haul f...

Market Inefficiencies, and more

What if the last change didn't go to the home team, but was awarded in some other fashion? For instance, if it was based on the score, or the zone, or the manpower situation? I wonder how much of the home ice advantage would disappear? I may look into that. If you're aware of research in this matter, please be sure to send it my way.
Boston Bruins
One of the hottest teams in the league right now are the Boston Bruins. They have an amazing top line, a hot goalie, and their organizational strengt...

Jagr, Olympics, Horvat

Well, I guess I'm officially old. Jagr, who made his debut the month Germany was unified and the first web server was launched, has played his last NHL game (or so we assume). It was a real honour to write an article for NHL.com that included five interesting stats about his amazing career, including the fact that "Only 15.0 percent of active NHL players (145 of 967) have as many points in their entire career as Jagr has since turning 40." 
This wasn't in the article, but I since checked and c...

Artemi Panarin, and more

This week, I got a lot of attention for the following tweet about defensemen, and the plus/minus statistic.

I didn't tweet that to take a shot at plus/minus, because it's strengths and limitations have already been covered in some detail. In fact, the first time I was published in this field was on that topic, in the Hockey Research Journal back in 2001 (Iain Fyffe gave me a co-author credit). However, it is interesting that some of the game's most respect defensemen were among the league's wo...

Hiring a Graphic Artist

I'm hiring a graphic artist for the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update. To apply, email vollman at hockey abstract dot com by February 15 with the subject Graphic Artist, and please be sure to provide a sample of your work.
Like the 2015 and 2016 editions, the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update will be in PDF format only (not in print), will be about 100 pages, and will feature updates to the stats and innovations covered in the various books in the Hockey Abstract series. It will also feature player usage...

Trade deadline, Colorado, Washington

The trade deadline is approaching fast -- February 26, 2018. As such, I've already been studying the history of the trade deadline, and exploring what various organizations might be doing for the next month and two days.
As I wrote in my recent piece for ESPN, "since 2005, there has been an average of 40.6 trades in the month leading up to the deadline, 21.3 of which occur on the final day and 7.3 in the two days previous, based on the raw data made available at Pro Sports Transactions." Here...

The Auston Matthews Controversy

My recent article on ESPN Insider explored the idea of trading Auston Matthews, and tried to land on a situation where it might make sense. Despite the modest tone, even the mere suggestion that such a possibility should be examined had exactly the outraged response that any reasonable sportswriter would expect. Even at my beer league game that Friday, someone in the locker room asked me if I heard about the idiot who wrote that Matthews should be traded. 
Well, having taken a week for things...

New Gadgets

The Pull the Goalie Bot is here!
Inspired by the Fourth Down Bot in football, @ThePullBot calculates the ideal time for the trailing team to pull the goalie in each game, and tweets it out. It also tweets out when the team actually pulled the goalie, and remarks at how the odds of winning the game go up and down as goals are scored on the empty-net, or with the extra attacker.
I've been working in conjunction with my friend Peter Tanner on this initiative, who hosts the awesome MoneyPuck websit...