Player tracking technology coming to World Cup of Hockey: 3 things to hope for
Player and puck tracking could help revolutionize hockey analysis
The NHL and NHLPA held a joint press event Wednesday to mark the one month countdown to the World Cup of Hockey. The league and union also unveiled some of the new twists that will be part of the tournament, some of which that can have a potentially longer-term impact on the league.
Among the revelations, it was announced that the World Cup of Hockey will feature new player and puck tracking technology. It was last tested out at the 2015 NHL All-Star Game in Columbus, with very little else known to the public. This time, the data collected will be used on television broadcasts and elsewhere, providing some unique insights into what is happening on the ice.
Sportvision, the company that brought the virtual first-down marker and K-zone into the sporting world, has partnered with the NHL to bring tracking technology to live games. Seeing how tracking tech has worked with MLB’s “Statcast” and some professional soccer leagues, there could be a lot of interesting information gleaned from this tournament.
Here’s a sampling of what Sportvision will be tracking according to NHL.com: puck and player speed, puck trajectory, distance traveled for players and the puck, player ice time, zone time, shots, shot distance, shot direction, and possession information.
The league is also working with SAP, who has been running point on the league’s first foray into advanced stats on their website. They’ll be doing the same for the tracked data, which will then be included in editorial content on the tournament’s website.
Perhaps the best news about this being used during the World Cup is that the league is getting a nice-sized sample of games to collect data from as the NHL considers making this technology part of their long-term plans.
“What’s really great about using the technology in this tournament is it’s two weeks, it’s in one place and it really gives us an opportunity to test it before we have to decide whether or not we’re going to unleash it on 1,230 regular-season games (and) if you include the outdoor games, more than 30 different venues,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said during Wednesday’s press event (via NHL.com).
While the tracking technology should be met with cautious optimism, seeing as we haven’t really been privy to how it works, there’s reason to be excited about it.
There are the basic, interesting things it can track like player and shot speed, but there’s even more we can hope it will do.
With advanced stats becoming part of the mainstream, the desire for more and more information is there. Right now, hockey’s most utilized advanced stats are extremely revealing, but they’re also inexact. Measuring the number of shot attempts a team has at even strength as a way of determining their puck possession has proven to be as close as you could hope to complete accuracy. With player and puck tracking, could that be taken to another level? Could we have exact possession figures? Even further, will we be able to see how much an individual player possesses the puck in a given game?
That’s what we’ll hopefully find out. Here are a few other things I’ll hope to see from the league’s tracking initiative at the World Cup:
1. Keep it simple on broadcasts, but make deeper tracking data public
On a television broadcast, things need to be simple. Things like player speed and the speed of a shot in a game situation will be fascinating to know about. It doesn’t necessarily have to get deeper than that on TV because you want a broadcast that caters to fans casual and hardcore alike. Getting bogged down with too much data just won’t work.
However, hardcore fans are going to see that information and they’re going to want even more context as to what’s happening on the ice. Without knowing how much of the data is going to be made public, there’d be a lot of value in releasing at least portions of the raw data.
Sadly, it does not sound like a lot of it is going to be made available. The league is going to review it internally before deciding how to distribute the information. After the way the launch of the “enhanced stats” portion of NHL.com went, this may leave some skeptical as to what data the league deems necessary for public consumption.
Making at least a portion of the raw data public, however, could allow for wider spread analysis of it. Much of the advanced stats movement was pushed forward by hobbyists who made discovery after discovery that then held up to public peer review. The wider the net of analysts, perhaps the more we could glean from the data collected. It’s unlikely to happen, but it’s something to hope for.
2. Specific data points that would be interesting to know
In the description of what will be collected above, “possession information” could cover any number of things. Among the many things this technology could collect, beyond team puck possession, it would be interesting to know how many times each player touches the puck, the percentage of passes he completes, who is responsible for the team exiting the defensive zone or entering the offensive zone. All of those pieces of information, among many others, could help majorly in individual player evaluation.
Knowing how much time Erik Karlsson has the puck on his stick in his own zone, or how many passes he completes on a breakout would be fascinating, especially for a player with such polarizing views of him.
Especially in a best-on-best tournament, how the top players separate themselves from the best of their peers could lead to a new understanding of what makes certain players so good. The league also benefits because that kind of stuff fuels conversation, debate, player rankings, everything. It would open a lot of doors for everyone.
3. Player tracking comes to the NHL on a full-time basis soon
As Bettman noted, this is an ample testing ground for this technology. The speed and physicality of the World Cup games will closely mirror that of the NHL. In fact, it will probably be faster. If this technology is shown to work and shown to benefit the league from a promotional standpoint, hopefully it’s in every rink by 2017-18.
The league’s recent partnership with BAM Tech to improve their digital media presence and their willingness to officially jump into advanced stats on their league website show their desire to give their fans more. Player tracking has a chance to open so many more doors in that same way.
The NHL is drenched in nuance, which is part of the reason it can be a difficult sport to get into. Player tracking, however, gives more context and in digestible ways. For new fans, seeing how fast or how far a player skated to a loose puck or how hard a shot from the point was gives a sense of the true speed and power of the game. For hardcore fans, they get more context and insight into their favorite players beyond the box scores.
It’s a win for fans of any experience level, which is why it would be a win for the league. Not only that, but this technology very well could provide teams with incredible new ways to scout and evaluate players.
As noted, the tracking technology should be viewed with cautious optimism until we know what it will track and how well. The possibilities, however, are fascinating.