The unofficial online home for fans of the Western Michigan University Broncos. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Don't know if any of you have seen this yet. Article on analytics in hockey. I'll admit my eyes began to glaze over and I skimmed the middle part but it is an interesting concept. Baseball fans - think sabremetrics for hockey. Andy Murray, among many others was quoted in the article.

The analytics era

I confess that I sucked you in with the title and it wasn't what you thought it was going to be.

So sue me. No, wait.... ahhhh

I'm a big fan of enhanced stats, from a fans perpective. Unfortunaly, in college hockey they are rarly disclosed to the fans. NHL is doing a better job.

From a fan stand point, it drives me nuts to read a reporters article where the writer just refers to the box score stats, ie. shots, points, plus/minus to write thier article, when in reality, often those stats really do not tell you what actually happened in the game. Often I wonder if they even watched the game and if they did, what were they watching?

My current pet pieve (I know, I have a lot) is the NCHC defenseman of the week awards and some of thier nominations. The primary metric used is "points". But many times I've seen the games in which the NCHC defensemen of the week played and was actually, defensively, one of the worst defensmen on the ice.

I love these advanced stats to a point. They give a much more accurate picture of a player then traditional stats do.

My problem with them though is that some people believe they are the only way to evaluate a player. No matter how good a stat system is the stats can never tell the whole story.