Justin Williams

What Individual Point Percentage Can Tell Us About the 2015-16 Caps

Travis Yost recently discussed the utility of individual point percentage (IPP) in forecasting player performance. The article is a great introduction to IPP, so I recommend reading the entire thing if you’re not familiar with the concept.

Here’s a excerpt:

Another metric I like to look at is ‘Individual Point Percentage’ (“IPP“), which shows how frequently a player was awarded a point in an event his team (a) scored; and (b) the player was on the ice. Much like our on-ice save percentage example for defencemen, IPP regresses substantially towards league averages. On average, forwards usually receive a point on about 68 per cent of goals scored when they are on the ice. That number sits at about 30 per cent for defencemen.

Context is key: we simply can’t treat all players as equals in a hockey vacuum. Sidney Crosby(84.8 per cent) and Erik Karlsson (49.4 per cent) lead career IPP and it’s not a fluke – they’re constantly involved in the run of play, and as such, pick up extra points along the way. If we want to identify outliers, we must first observe strong deviations from the league norms, and then observe strong deviations from a player’s career norms.

Let’s apply this to the 2015-16 Capitals.

(more…)