Why Hockey Needs Numbers
Hockey is one of the hardest sports to measure. The puck moves fast, lines change every forty seconds, and goals are rare, so a team can play well for a whole night and still lose 1-0.
For years, hockey was judged with simple numbers like goals, assists and plus/minus. These are easy to read but they hide a lot. A player can collect a plus rating just by being on the ice when a teammate scores, and a hot goaltender can make a weak team look great for a month. Modern analytics try to separate luck from skill by measuring the things that tend to produce goals over a full season.
This site explains the metrics I find most useful and shows how I plan to turn them into a hockey analytics website of my own, using the web design skills I have built this semester.
