NEW PERK: WAR Roster Builder 3.0 (Patreon)

I'm very happy to present the WAR Roster Builder which has stronger projections and more features included than either of the first two I released. Click the link and request access and I will grant it right away.

The first big change of course is from the WAR model that it's built on. The TopDownHockey model's use of priors and detachment from linemate shooting percentage makes its outputs more repeatable and dramatically reduces the number of shocking outliers that were present in the old roster builder (*waves fist at Travis Boyd*). That means you will not be seeing guys like Bryan Rust, Jared McCann, and Valeri Nichushkin being ranked as more valuable than Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Nathan MacKinnon. To maximize the projection's accuracy, instead of just weighting WAR/60 from the previous three seasons, I've weighted each component of it based on regression results. So offence driving might lean more heavily towards last season while finishing is more evenly weighted.

The second is the source of the depth charts. The previous roster builder used CapFriendly's depth charts manually input by me, which was time-consuming to say the least. This one automatically scrapes the website to retrieve the charts, which is a big improvement. In some cases, the lineups might take a second or two to load; if results seem very wonky I would recommend that you refresh and allow the charts to reload.

The third is that powerplay and penalty kill projections are no longer just based on last year's results but use a player-level regression of PP and PK WAR matched with the projected special teams TOI of each player. So teams that acquired a PP specialist in the offseason like St. Louis will see that have an effect.

The fourth is the addition of two extra features: a live standings projection for the 2020-21 season (based on the depth charts and player projections)...

...and a Team Lineup Card which show's the team's projected ranking in 30 categories based on their current depth chart. 

You might notice one thing missing - the historic roster builder. Restoring that is a work in progress. Patrick has completed WAR data going back to 2014-15 (as you saw in the timelines), but the unreliability of earlier data has made it a challenge to build an equally high-quality model before that point. My plan in the meantime is to update this roster builder with a 2014-15 to 2019-20 sheet very shortly, but my priority was to get the 2020-21 projection stuff ready before the season started. 

Finally, the next thing up for me before the season starts is to bring you guys the "original" styled player cards again. Previously, due to data source limitations, I could only make this available as image files posted in albums. This made them a pain in the ass to navigate through. Now I'll be able to have them as a spreadsheet in the same way as the current player cards are. Here's a preview:

And that's it for now! Patrick and I are busy getting ready for the coming season. I expect that things like player cards won't be updated for the first few weeks of the season, just because the data set will be so small. But we'll have a full update on plans before the season starts.

As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions/concerns or have noticed any glitches.

Happy New Year,

Jack