UPDATE: Plans for the Season (Patreon)

The 2020-21 season is actually starting in two days - it's crazy. With that in mind I thought it would be a good idea to update what my plans are in terms of updating and putting out perks for this coming season.

First thing's first. For RAPM or WAR to work, it needs a reasonable sample size. A model trained on 5 or 10 games will be essentially useless and more misleading than revealing. With that in mind, it will likely be a little while before updated player stats will be available for this season. I've given Patrick (who actually built the models) discretion over when he feels that the outputs are valuable to make sure I don't give you guys bad info.  It's worth noting that other stats site also have this type of delay - it's just a fact of stat life.

With that in mind, I'll be focusing on two things for the time being:

1. Updating the classic player cards.

Some people have noted that the original player cards and the index have been removed from here. That's true, and a necessary aspect of the model switch. I'll be uploading an updated version of those cards in model form soon, this week if it's doable.

2. Focusing on Teams

This will be a lot of fun. My player cards use intricate regression-adjusted metrics that require a lot of sample size to be remotely useful. But team-level analytics are a lot different. About a week into the season I will be uploading not only team cards (which I haven't designed yet) as well as the far more fun and vicious Team Head-to-Head Cards. If you read my playoff previews back in the summer they might be familiar. These will compare two teams of your choice head to head in basically every useful category, across three cards.

Playdriving

Offence and Shooting

Defence and Goaltending

Especially in a season where every team will be only playing in division and there will be a hell of a lot of rivalries going on, these cards should not only add understanding of how teams are playing but hopefully add some fuel to the fire.

I'll keep you guys updated on what's going on on this site as well as when the player cards will be updated with new 2020-21 numbers. In the meantime, if you have any questions or even ideas for what you would like to see up until then (either on the player cards or otherwise) please let me know. I'm especially responsive to Twitter DMs.

Cheers,

Jack