Player value added

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j4241
Posts: 533
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 2:38 pm

Player value added

Post by j4241 » Wed Nov 30, 2022 11:01 am

Some teams have also lost players to injury, which depending on the player can have a meaningful impact. Here are players that I'm aware of having missed games for each of these teams, with the number of games missed (out of team total) next to the name (this data can be found by looking at games played on the Hub, which is not always accurate - I've corrected Hub data where I'm aware of it):

1 Andover HS (MN) 99.58.............(Brown - 1/5 - yet to play since injury)
2 Gentry Academy HS (MN) 98.82...(Sajevic - 2/4 - yet to play since injury)
3 Maple Grove HS (MN) 98.8
4 Minnetonka HS (MN) 98.67
5 Edina HS (MN) 98.17
6 Warroad HS (MN) 97.79
7 Proctor/Hermantown HS (MN) 97.07
8 Hill-Murray HS (MN) 96.83..........(Hause - 1/3 - returned to play)
9 Centennial/Spring Lake Park HS (MN) 96.53
10 Moorhead HS (MN) 95.97
11 Blake HS (MN) 95.77................(Morrison - 6/6 - yet to play)
12 Stillwater HS (MN) 95.32
13 Roseau HS (MN) 95.04
14 Holy Family HS (MN) 94.8
15 Bemidji HS (MN) 94.68
16 Rogers HS (MN) 94.59
17 Lakeville North HS (MN) 94.46
18 Elk River HS (MN) 93.9
19 Orono HS (MN) 93.68
20 Holy Angels HS (MN) 93.58

Please let me know if I've missed absences for any others, or have game counts wrong. I may revisit this analysis during the year, so will include any games others may miss (like Sauer at Andover).

All four of these are elite, D1 committed seniors. Losing them makes each of their teams worse. How much? Or said another way, how much value does one star player add? That depends in part on who is replacing them, and the quality of player replacing them varies by team. In the case of a very deep team like Andover, Brown's replacement is still probably pretty good. For Morrison at Blake, the gap in skill between her and the replacement is probably larger. Still, it would be interesting to know how much of a difference those players might make when they return. Once myhockeyrankings provides the game by game data for this year, it will be interesting to look at how much a team's rating changes with or without star players on the ice. Clearly, Gentry, Andover, Hill-Murray and Blake aren't the same without Sajevic, Brown, Hause and Morrison the ice. I will revisit this in the future once more data is available for this year.

The myhockeyrankings data doesn't provide enough data for this season to evaluate this, but I'm aware of two very strong players that lost significant games last year to injury - Sami Bowlby at Burnsville and Ellie Morrison at Blake - both played in roughly half their regular season games, which provides a natural experiment to assess the impact of missing a star player. I looked at the myhockeyrankings game by game data for last year, and averaged their team ratings in regular season games those two played vs those they did not play. Here are the results:

Burnsville Rating
With Bowlby.....95.80
W/O Bowlby.....96.46

Blake Rating
W/ Morrison.....96.97
W/O Morrison...95.36

I'm not sure what to make of Bowlby's data - was Burnsville really better without her? But according to this, Burnsville was the 14th best team in MN without her, and the 20th best with her. Her injury happened mid-season, and the rating for the games she played before the injury was 94.37, while the rating after she returned was 96.70. Perhaps it's explained by substantial overall team improvement. If the latter, they were roughly 0.25 goals better on the ice in their stretch run compared to the games while she was injured, enough to bump their ranking with her playing by a bit, from 14th to 13th.

Morrison's data paints a different picture in terms of the impact of one player. Blake's team rating went up by 1.6 points with her on the ice versus without. They were the 9th best team in MN with her (based on the average rating), and the 21st without her (versus finishing 15th overall). If her contribution were to hold true whenever she is healthy again this year (worth an increment of 1.6 ratings points), Blake would be the 6th best AA team in the state and 7th best overall (slightly behind Warroad), versus a current overall rating of 11.

This may be an outlier in terms of impact, but this year seems to be a year of injuries, so I thought it would be interesting to look at how big a potential impact injuries can make. If I were working on subjective state rankings, I'm not sure how to incorporate this - do you rank a Gentry or a Blake without Sajevic or Morrison, or do you include them? Unclear.

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