In the first entry in my series of attempts to see if we should actually be using men’s hockey analytics conclusions in women’s hockey, we’ll be looking at the value of different zone entry types in women’s hockey. Tim Keller did something similar in women’s hockey in his 2021 Big Data Cup entry, but did not explicitly compare these results to men’s hockey. Nayan Patel also did something similar comparing zone entry success and passes before a goal between women’s and men’s hockey, but didn’t do an analysis of offense generated post-entry.
Here, I aim to explicitly do that, while roughly replicating the methods used to produce the conclusions from these two posts by Eric Tulsky: More on the Advantages of Puck Possession over Dump and Chase and Zone Entries: What Drives Power Play Success? In these pieces, Tulsky proved that controlled entries generate vastly more shots/offense than non-controlled entries did (~0.56 shots per entry if we’re rounding vs ~0.25 shots per entry). Alex Novet also did a more recent analysis that showed a similar difference, where carry-ins generated ~.66 shots per entry and dump-ins generated ~0.29 shots per entry.
To look at this in women’s hockey, I am using play-by-play data from this last year’s PWHPA Secret® Dream Gap Tour, as provided by Sportlogiq and Jayna Hefford. For all even-strength zone entries, I looked at the mean number of shots that happened between each offensive zone entry, and the next time play either stopped or exited the zone. This figure is below.
A chart shows carry-ins generate an average of 0.73 shots per entry, chip-ins generate 0.21, dump-ins generate 0.14, and pass-ins generate 0.54.
What we see here lines up with Tulsky’s conclusions that controlled entries (carry-ins, pass-ins) generate more shots than uncontrolled ones do (chip-ins, dump-ins). The interesting thing though, is how much more offense these controlled entries generate. Carry-ins in women’s hockey generate more shots per entry than in men’s hockey, while dump-ins in women’s hockey generate fewer shots per entry than in men’s hockey.
I suspect this is because, as friends of the newsletter Mikael Nahabedian and Nayan Patel have said to me, play sequences in women’s hockey tend to be longer because of the lack of hitting. If you can’t be interrupted physically by someone when entering the zone with the puck, then maybe you can also get more shots off against them in general. This theory doesn’t particularly hold for pass-ins or chip-ins though, which are around the same as what Tulsky found.
However, my first question upon seeing this data was "is this because Tulsky proved that carry-ins are worth more than dump-ins or independent of that?" I.e. have coaches & players across hockey integrated this into play so much that they’ve made carry-ins more successful by simply focusing on them? Or is there something special about women's hockey specifically?
To answer this, I'd like to replicate the same analysis for men's hockey with more current data, but alas, I am not aware of anything, aside from maybe the All Three Zones project, that fits the bill. If any men's hockey data providers or Corey Sznajder are reading this, any chance you can run these numbers for me so I can post them here in a nice chart? (Technically it's free ad space)
The most recent piece that looks at this is that Alex Novet post I mentioned earlier, which held up the conclusion that in men’s hockey carry-ins generated ~.66 shots per entry and dump-ins generated ~0.29 shots per entry. So I think we’re mostly safe in saying there’s something interesting about controlled entries in women’s hockey.
Another interesting avenue to look at is doing the same analysis on the power play:
A chart shows carry-ins generate an average of 0.91 shots per entry, chip-ins generate 0 (though there were only 5 chip-ins in this data), dump-ins generate 0.38, and pass-ins generate 0.96.
To me, this chart speaks for itself, emphasizing the point made earlier. Carry-ins and passes generate way vastly more offense than dump-ins or chip-ins do. Compared to an analysis that Arik Parnass did in 2016, it continues to be evident that something in women’s hockey causes more offense to be generated on controlled entries overall.
Until proven otherwise, I personally agree with the previously mentioned theory that the lack of hits in women’s hockey is a primary driver of extra offense.