When Hockey Prospectus first launched in 2009 (as Puck Prospectus) the very first article was about translating scoring totals from the Russian league to the NHL, and was quickly followed up with a piece that looked at the Swedish Elite League (elitserien). Each piece used a system pioneered by Gabriel Desjardins in 2004, borrowed from baseball’s Bill James, to calculate the average change in scoring totals for all the players who came to the NHL after playing in other leagues.

 

This type of work depends on having a set of data that includes the raw data for everyone who played in another league, like the European, US College or Canadian junior leagues, the year before playing in the NHL.  Using the attached spreadsheet allows everyone to conduct their own analysis with NHL translations.