NHL Minecraft Skins: Round 2

Studying for exams, decided to make a few skins again. Six more, in the fashion of my last post:

Vancouver Canucks away jersey: Download

Vancouver Canucks home jersey: Download 

Washington Capitals away jersey: Download

Washington Capitals home jersey: Download

Philadelphia Flyers away jersey: Download

Philadelphia Flyers home jersey: Download

Buffalo Sabres away jersey: Download

Buffalo Sabres home jersey: Download

Ottawa Senators away jersey: Download

Ottawa Senators home jersey: Download

Dallas Stars away jersey: Download

Dallas Stars home jersey: Download

Enjoy! Look forward to more posts as summer rolls around.

NHL Minecraft Skins: The Original Six

It's been a long time since I lasted posted! School got busy, and I got tied up with other projects unfortunately.

I made a few NHL Minecraft skins months ago though, and I thought I would share them. I've only made them for the Original Six teams, I might do more if there is any interest. Anyways, here they are:

Chicago Blackhawks away jersey: Download

Chicago Blackhawks home jersey: Download 

Boston Bruins away jersey: Download

Boston Bruins home jersey: Download

Montreal Canadiens away jersey: Download

Montreal Canadiens home jersey: Download

Toronto Maple Leafs away jersey: Download

Toronto Maple Leafs home jersey: Download

New York Rangers away jersey: Download

New York Rangers home jersey: Download

Detroit Red Wings away jersey: Download

Detroit Red Wings home jersey: Download

I'm not too happy with how the Toronto and Boston logos look, but it's the best I could do with so few pixels. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the skins! Hopefully I can post more often in the coming year/semester.

NHL Stanley Cup Final (Blackhawks vs. Bruins) - Goal Probability Map

With the Stanley Cup Final beginning tomorrow, I thought it might be topical to make a quick post about it.

Using data provided by the NHL website, I have collected shot data from the regular season up until the conference finals for both play-off finalists: the Boston Bruins and the Chicago Blackhawks. From this, I constructed a map of each teams percentage of scoring from a given spot in the offensive zone:

The differences are interesting. Boston is quite clearly a more defensive team than Chicago, with a lower probability of scoring all around, and many of their chances coming from behind the hash marks (likely from defencemen). This fits in with their style of play though; the Bruins frequently win games not from scoring a large quantity of goals, but rather from a solid defence.

Chicago on the other hand resides on the other side of the spectrum with very high probabilities of scoring near the crease. An interesting feature of the Chicago map is its asymmetry: when looking at shots taken behind the hash-marks, the Blackhawks have a higher probability of scoring from shots taken on the right side of the ice. This skew is caused by their first and third best scorers in the regular season, Patrick Kane and Marian Hossa, both right wingers. It's amazing that these two players can make such a huge difference when this sort of data is viewed at a high level.

All that said, we will see if this data holds true come tomorrow.

NHL - A History of Team Performance

The NHL has been running for 96 seasons since the inaugural 1917-18 season. That's a long time.

With such a long history, I thought it might be interesting to plot each team's regular season record against time, to see if any patterns emerged. Here is the result:

Probably the most obvious features is the dominance of the Montreal Canadiens for much of the league's history. Starting in the mid-1940's and not fading until the mid-1990's, Montreal was a force to be reckoned with, and this is reflected by their 24 Stanley Cups.

Periods of Bruins dominance can be seen in the 1930's and, more prominently, in the 1970's during the Bobby Orr years. Similar trends can be seen with other dynasties: Gretzky's Oilers, Howe's and Yzerman's Red Wings, etc.

Another interesting feature that can be pulled from this graph is the stability of the league over time. This can be inferred from large spikes in the graph. Most of these spikes are caused by teams either entering or leaving the league, disturbing the balance of power between the rest of the teams; the team entering or leaving the league's share of points are not evenly distributed between the remaining teams.

The NHL's early days were extremely turbulent; the First and Second World Wars and the Great Depression forcing many teams to fold. The Original Six era brought about a relative calm, with teams growing better or worse much more gradually. This peace would be upset by the NHL's expansion following the 1966-67 season, and wouldn't reach another equilibrium until the late 1980's, which was cut short by further expansion. The league hasn't really reached an equilibrium ever since.

The introduction of the salary cap following the 2004-05 lockout probably further destabilized the league (at least in the short term), but it is quite clear that teams are becoming much more equal in terms of their share of points. Barring further expansion, it is unlikely that a team will ever again dominate the league like the Montreal Canadiens once did.

There are probably more trends in this data, but I will leave it to the reader to find them.