I've also continued to comment on the scoring race, the playoffs, the NHL awards, the draft, and free agency on social media, and run the occasional opinion poll. In fact, I thought I'd share some of the more interesting things right here, right now.

Quite a few teams had a tough season, but it seems like the overwhelming feeling is that Edmonton's season was the most disappointing.

Forget the Art Ross Trophy, because here are the results of the All-Connor scoring race. It's another one for McDavid!

106 McDavid

56 Kyle

30 Sheary

28 Brown

13 Murphy

12 Carrick, Brickley

2 Hellebuyck

In other news, with a career-high 92 points, Anze Kopitar has led all Slovenians in scoring for the 12th consecutive season. Jan Mursak gave him a bit of a scare in 2011-12, I think.

On an only slightly more serious note, I did a first-name scoring race, as requested by Rob Denaburg (@rsd08). This does not include goalies, nor does it group variations of names together. If you do group names, I think Alex wins with 778, well ahead of John, 621.

By first name, the lowest scoring rate is Ben (minimum 200 games), with 29 points in 214 games, which is 0.14 points per game.

Here's another miscellaneous poll.

Pittsburgh was finally knocked off by the Capitals. Looks like fans still think Mario was number one.

With a combined 188 shots in the playoffs, Kuznetsov and Ovechkin fell just shy of the two-player record, held by Zetterberg and Samuelsson, who took 195 shots for Detroit in the 2007-08 playoffs.

The Vezina is always frustrating, because it seems to be based on wins rather than the goalie's own performance.

Wins: 1st, 2nd, 3rd

Save percentage: 3rd, 5th, 9th

Quality Start percentage: 2nd, 6th, 13th

Goals Saved Above Average: 1st, 4th, 9th

Conclusion: JUST WIN, BABY!

Doughty won the Norris. My friends at @Fantasy_Ref were kind enough to point out that my pre-season points projections for last year's Norris finalists were all within 2 points. Burns and Karlsson were within 1. 

That led to a big contract for Doughty. 

If you're unhappy with any of the PHWA's voting results, Jack Flancer (@jakef1873) put together a visualization of everybody's voting record.

Colin Cudmore (@CudmoreColin) put together a list of how much cap space each team has in terms of retained salary, buyouts, and what not.

Goalies weren't a major story this year, but it looked like Bernier and Hutton battled for top spot.

We almost went the entire season without a coach getting fired. Actually, since the Rangers already played their last game when Vigneault was released, perhaps we did, on a technicality.

There's a new cap management site out there called PuckPedia, and it includes information about agents

For those of you who have been enjoying the DEV model, the numbers have been updated with 2017-18 data.

Emmanuel Perry of Corsica Hockey has a version of NHLe that's done differently, and has a far greater number of leagues.

The fourth annual hockey analytics conference at Carleton University is being held September 14-15. Register here.

Luke and Josh of Evolving Wild put together their version of WAR. I think we're up to a dozen stats of this nature, five of which are called WAR.

In case you're wondering, there is one team who had more players drop by at least 10 points than Columbus, and that's Chicago, with five. Buffalo, Calgary, Pittsburgh, and Vancouver were at three apiece.

With 6 points in his last 5 games, Marleau has reached the 40-point mark for the 18th time in 20 seasons -- exceptions were his rookie season and the 48-game 2012-13.

Justin Faulk scored 12 of his 34 career power-play goals in the first 65 days of the 2015-16 season.

I don't want to jinx it, but another remarkable situation is that no coach has been fired in 2017-18. In two days, Jon Cooper will have been coach of TB for five years, which is the second-longest single-team tenure among active coaches.

Gabriel Landeskog is +30 at home, but -11 on the road, largest gap in the league.

And I'll close by mentioning that the Philadelphia Flyers are looking for a hockey analytics intern. 

And, that you should contact Philip Giannini at philip@statstrack.ca or call (647) 505 3430 for more details about StatsTrack's new studying at your own pace course.

Given its growing influence, there's an increasing amount of overlap between hockey analytics and conventional wisdom. For example, the players were polled recently, and it the question on the league's most underrated player served as an example of an area where the eye test and analytics now agree. All five names pop up constantly in studies by the number-crunchers. I'm not sure that was the case 5-10 years ago.

March 2-4, there was another excellent hockey analytics conference in Vancouver. If you missed it, it was recorded. (YouTube) By my count, that makes 15 conferences in 9 cities in under 4 years. It's so awesome that this is now a thing, and I'm deeply appreciative of all those who organize and support these events.

I'm not including the Sloan conference, because that's focused on so many sports, and hockey is sometimes just an afterthought. However, there was an excellent panel this year with John Chayka, Chris Snow, Dan Bylsma, Christopher Boucher, and Alison Lukan. (YouTube)

Whenever you are based, StatsTrack has a course for manual trackers (website). Please note that I'm not involved or affiliated with any of these conferences or organizations, I am just passing along the information. 

Finally, there's a new sports analytics newsletter available, called Stathead. I also have a newsletter, but at the moment it is restricted to people who have purchased one of my books. Eventually, I will upgrade my account and open it up to everyone.

What if the last change didn't go to the home team, but was awarded in some other fashion? For instance, if it was based on the score, or the zone, or the manpower situation? I wonder how much of the home ice advantage would disappear? I may look into that. If you're aware of research in this matter, please be sure to send it my way.

One of the hottest teams in the league right now are the Boston Bruins. They have an amazing top line, a hot goalie, and their organizational strength has finally manifested itself, and solved their long-standing depth problem.

On February 9th, I noticed they had amassed 58 of a possible 70 points in the preceding 35 games, during which time they were 27-4-4, and outscoring opponents 124-68. To visually demonstrate that peak, I mapped out a rolling 35-game average all the way back to the 2005 lockout, and here's how it looked.

Quick note on the flip side: Columbus has made an about face in the wrong direction. On December 1, they were tied for third overall with a record of 17-8-1. Between then and February 10, they were 10-15-3, third last in the NHL. A very puzzling slide.

We first saw this in the summer, with free agents like Karl Alzner ($4.625M/yr for 5 years), Dmitry Kulikov ($4.13M for 3), Kris Russell ($4.0M for 4), Justin Schultz ($5.5M for 3), Michael Stone ($3.5M for 3), and Brendan Smith ($4.35M for 4).

Recently, Smith was placed on waivers, so it appeared that this inefficiency was slowly being corrected. But then, the Canucks signed Erik Gudbranson for $4.0M/yr for 3 years. So, the trend may continue into this summer.

Granted, it's only an opinion that these are mediocre No. 4 defensemen, especially the first adjective. Based on their ice time and usage, most of them can be roughly classified as No. 4 defensemen as a matter of fact, but classifying them as mediocre is simply my interpretation of their underlying statistics. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if I was in error in one of these cases. Indeed, I received a surprisingly emotional and passionate defense of Kulikov on Twitter. However, most people agree with the overall sentiment, even if they disagreed with one particular inclusion.

What does this mean for NHL front offices? Well, it's a bad time to sign these types of players. If a team is looking to sign a defensemen, then they might better off trying to manage with a low-cost secondary option like Nick Holden, John Moore, or Mark Barberio, and investing the savings elsewhere in the lineup. 

Another market inefficiency was highlighted in the recent trade between the Los Angeles Kings and the Ottawa Senators which included Dion Phaneuf and Marian Gaborik. The former got an inflated contract because of PDO, and the latter because of playoff success.

Phaneuf signed his contract right at the end of the miraculous 2013 calendar year. Remember that period of time? Toronto was getting very badly outplayed every night, but won games because of high shooting and save percentages (which, when added together, form PDO). There's nothing wrong with a high PDO, but history has shown time and time again that it can't be sustained. But, in the excitement of that success, they paid Phaneuf (and others) far, far more than they otherwise would have.

If anything contributes to big contracts more than a run of high PDO, then it's playoff success. Gaborik is a good example of that, because he was simply amazing when the Kings acquired him at the 2014 deadline. They won the Cup that year, so they signed an injury-prone 32-year-old to a big, seven-year deal. Now, only a few years into the deal, Gaborik is actually considered to be a negative asset in the salary cap world, to the point where the average fan feels that Ottawa would have to throw in a 2nd-round pick in order for another organization to take his contract off their hands.

Are you following your local GoalBot on Twitter? The GoalBots for all 31 teams have been setup, and you can check the Moneypuck website for more information.

My ESPN article this week looked at how to repair the Detroit Red Wings, but on Twitter I asked a quick question about the Chicago Blackhawks, and if it made sense to trade one of their three core players and, if so, who? Mostly it was a split between Toews and Keith, but I'm really not sure what my opinion would be.

My friend Stan Nieradka (@smn013) recently pointed out that 14 (of 37) Avalanche players from last season aren't in the NHL this year. I once dabbled with the idea of evaluating teams based on how many of their players no longer played in the NHL after that season. I'd love to go back and run this test historically and see how close 14 is to the record.

Injuries are down this year, according to the data compiled by @NHLInjuryViz

There's buzz that Brassard could be moved at the trade deadline, but I think his value is being overestimated. Brassard is used almost exclusively for his scoring, and his scoring rate is roughly average. At 30, he may decline. As a Senator, Brassard has averaged 1.50 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. That ranks 201st among the 434 forwards to play at least 500 minutes in that time, according to the data at Corsica Hockey.

A few goalies have already moved, including Petr Mrazek and Darcy Kuemper. I like to look at rolling averages, so I can get a view of a goalie's upside, downside, and overall trend. In Mrazek's case, his peak was almost exactly two years ago, from which his numbers fell quickly. Now, he is gradually climbing back to league average (in orange), but is still slightly below.

As for Kuemper, he's playing at his peak, which he first hit early in his career. However, he has spent most of his career near the league average (in orange), with slumps in the 2015 calendar year, and last season.

As pointed out on Sportsnet, Edmonton could be on the verge of a historically bad season killing penalties.

Well, I guess I'm officially old. Jagr, who made his debut the month Germany was unified and the first web server was launched, has played his last NHL game (or so we assume). It was a real honour to write an article for NHL.com that included five interesting stats about his amazing career, including the fact that "Only 15.0 percent of active NHL players (145 of 967) have as many points in their entire career as Jagr has since turning 40." 

This wasn't in the article, but I since checked and confirmed that Jagr led his team in scoring 13 times, which is tied with Sundin for 2nd (since 1967), behind only the Great One, 19 times.

Offensively, it appears that his place in history is somewhere between third and seventh, and I can't say that I would argue with that assessment.

This week, my article for ESPN Insider is about the Canadian and American Olympic teams, which will not include NHLers for the first time since professional hockey players were allowed to compete back in 1998. 

The average fan is pretty jaded about how competitive these teams will be. Most fans see Team Canada as a strong AHL teams, and Team USA as a mediocre one.

I can't completely disagree with those assessments. As I explored in more detail in the ESPN piece, each team should be ok offensively, but are seriously lacking defense, penalty killing, and goaltending. However, I still think that Team Canada wouldn't be completely out of place in the NHL. They might find themselves in the draft lottery, but they'd essentially fit in.

For no pressing reason, I wanted to see what the general feeling was about Horvat's contract. In a summer piece for ESPN, I identified Horvat's as one of the better contracts of the summer. However, when I re-ran my model using the version of WAR found on Corsica Hockey, it actually seemed like a very bad contract. That's the sort of thing that piques my interest. 

To get to the bottom of it, I usually like to start by figuring out what the conventional wisdom is. Turns out, his contract is viewed to be about right. Perhaps Horvat deserves some of the credit for Boeser's success right out of the gate?

You'll probably see me digging deeper into this question in the near future, so if you have some insight one way or the other, be sure to reach out to me and let me know.

This week, I got a lot of attention for the following tweet about defensemen, and the plus/minus statistic.

I didn't tweet that to take a shot at plus/minus, because it's strengths and limitations have already been covered in some detail. In fact, the first time I was published in this field was on that topic, in the Hockey Research Journal back in 2001 (Iain Fyffe gave me a co-author credit). However, it is interesting that some of the game's most respect defensemen were among the league's worst in plus/minus. in fact, three of those players were in the all-star game!

One fan took exception to Jeff Petry's inclusion on that list. Sure, he may not be at the same level as Karlsson and Burns, but he at least belongs with defensemen like Goligoski. After all, he's been a solid top pair defensemen his whole career. Last I checked, he's his team's leading defenseman in scoring (which he has done before), he's top two in average ice time (which he has done every year but once), and over past three years he has boosted his team's share of shot attempts by 2.8% (which ranks 24th among D to play 100 games). He appears to be quite solid.

No, he'll never be in a Norris race, but then again, it's hard to figure out who is. Unlike the Jack Adams race, the race for the Norris Trophy is wide open, and I really have no idea who should be in the mix. However, I did put together a player usage chart that included every defenseman with at least 25 points, and can attest that Morgan Rielly, Roman Josi, Drew Doughty, and Ryan Suter are worthy of consideration. To this, most people add P.K. Subban as well. Certainly, someone from Nashville should be in the mix.

Like the 2015 and 2016 editions, the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update will be in PDF format only (not in print), will be about 100 pages, and will feature updates to the stats and innovations covered in the various books in the Hockey Abstract series. It will also feature player usage charts and analysis for all 31 teams.

The key difference with the 2018 edition is that it will be in full colour, have a lot more charts and tables, will be in two columns, and will aim to have more of a lighter, mainstream feel to it. As such, I need a graphic artist to help me with that layout.

Responsibilities will include designing a header, footer, and background for each page, designing all the tables, charts, and graphs from the data that I provide, and essentially being responsible for the overall look and feel of the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update -- it will be released the first week of August 2018. If I can successfully negotiate the usage of player photographs, then the responsibilities will include the selection and layout of those as well.

As for compensation, there isn't a great deal of profit in these digital updates, but I place a high value on the work of others, and aim to share whatever money is made as generously as possible. We can agree on a set amount for your work, or a percentage of the profits, or a combination of the two.

Putting together these updates is the best part of my entire year. It's a lot of fun, very rewarding, and people really appreciate the end result, and how it helps unleash their passion for hockey, analytics, and the coming season. If you're interested in joining me as the graphic artist for the Hockey Abstract 2018 Update, then I look forward to receiving your email at vollman at hockey abstract dot com by February 15.

The trade deadline is approaching fast -- February 26, 2018. As such, I've already been studying the history of the trade deadline, and exploring what various organizations might be doing for the next month and two days.

As I wrote in my recent piece for ESPN, "since 2005, there has been an average of 40.6 trades in the month leading up to the deadline, 21.3 of which occur on the final day and 7.3 in the two days previous, based on the raw data made available at Pro Sports Transactions." Here is that information in chart form.

Obviously, some organizations tend to be more active than others. Specifically, the Ducks and the Coyotes tend to make a lot of deals, while the Red Wings, Stars, Predators and Islanders are known for making very few. 

You can't always go by what you see on the chart, of course. For example, if the view was restricted to just the six seasons since they moved from Atlanta, then the Winnipeg Jets would be at the bottom of the chart, not the Red Wings. It's also interesting that Lou Lamoriello didn't make every many moves when he was with the New Jersey Devils, but has been quite active with the Toronto Maple Leafs. In some cases, teams are very active when they are sellers, but don't so much as buyers -- Detroit may fall into that category. Finally, we really don't know what to expect at all from Buffalo or Los Angeles, who have brand new leadership. So, it should be an exciting year.

My piece for NHL.com is about the red-hot Colorado Avalanche, whose 10-game winning streak came to an end last night in Montreal, 4-2. To demonstrate how impressive this is, Namita (@nnstats) calculated that the odds of a 27-19 team achieving this feat is about 25-to-1.

So what's to credit for Colorado's surprising winning streak, which has lifted them back into playoff contention? Of all factors, the conventional wisdom is that Nathan MacKinnon deserves the lion's share of the credit.

The recent discussions on Auston Matthews and the difficult cap management choices the Toronto Maple Leafs have ahead of them has prompted some fans to re-visit how the Washington Capitals handled their cap-related woes this summer. 

For better or for worse, the Capitals let Karl Alzner, Justin Williams, and Marcus Johansson sign elsewhere for a combined total of $13.7 million, let Nate Schmidt go in the expansion draft, and invested $18.65 million long term in Evgeny Kuznetsov, T.J. Oshie, and Dmitry Orlov. At the moment, Washington is first in the tough Metropolitan division by five points, leading to the popular perception that they have navigated the salary cap as well as teams like the Chicago Blackhawks.

About a third of fans are happy now, but have raised legitimate long-term concerns about the decisions that the Capitals made. Based on the contracts that were signed, it might have been best to keep Schmidt on defense instead of Orlov or Alzner, to trade away Kuznetsov for a replacement No. 4 defenseman (and possibly some picks and prospects), and then use the extra cap space to retain all three of Oshie, Williams, and Johansson up front. 

I know that there's some reluctance to part with someone with Kuznetsov's upside, but the salary cap era isn't about having the best players, it's about having the best bang for the buck. Kuznetsov has the 22nd highest cap hit in the NHL, but is tied for 32nd in scoring -- even with a solid 43 points in 48 games. Plus, when you consider goalies, defensemen, and defensive-minded players, Kuznetsov probably ranks even lower among NHL players, possibly even outside the top 50. And, at 25, he's likely already at his peak right now, and won't get significantly better over the duration of his contract. To be clear, I'm not arguing that trading Kuznetsov is absolutely what Washington should have done, I'm just suggesting the possibility that it's the kind of move that was worth strong consideration.

There was a minor ruffle in the hockey analytics community this week, with very public accusations from prominent names that ranged from failing to properly research and/or cite one's work, all the way to outright plagiarism. I don't know enough to weigh in on any specific case, but I agree in spirit with the philosophy of looking for and mentioning existing research on a topic before diving into it. In fact, it was tip No. 4 for contributing authors, in Hockey Abstract 2017.

However, I know first-hand how hard it is to keep up to speed on everything that's out there, so it's understandable that some pretty notable studies get missed. In fact, even some of those who were pushing this point the hardest on social media have at some point been unaware of contributions so well-known and so significant that their ignorance appeared to be deliberate -- but it rarely is.

Obviously, the controversy made for a difficult week for those involved, and I feel for them. However, the silver lining is that we are finally starting an important discussion about something that has been going on for a long time but was never really mentioned until it applied to the specific personalities involved in this particular case. 

Nobody can stay on top of everything, but an honest effort to mention related studies is worth investing a little extra time, in my opinion. However, how people invest their time, and the balance that people strike between promoting their own work and that of others, are matters of personal taste that can vary dramatically from one individual to another. If you found this whole incident upsetting, the best way to deal with it might be to adjust your own.

Well, having taken a week for things to die down and for everyone to move on, I decided to devote today's blog post to this experience, and what I learned from it. The primary focus is on the subject matter itself, but I chose not to completely avoid the non-hockey aspect, and have a few thoughts on online sports debates in general.

The great majority of people completely disagreed with the idea of trading Auston Matthews, but not necessarily because there was anything wrong with the argument itself. In most cases, they simply don't think Matthews shouldn't be traded, no matter what. He could ask for $16 million, lose a leg, and they'd still argue that the building should be burnt to the ground before Lou picks up a phone. Well not really, but you get the idea.

There are two possible explanations for these results; either Matthews is viewed as the (second) most valuable player in the NHL, or there's a philosophical opinion that a team's top player should never be traded, no matter who it is.

Personally, I think it's the former case. If I ran the same poll with McDavid instead of Matthews, I'd probably get the same response, or even lower than 18%. But, if I ran it with Nikita Kucherov, Johnny Gaudreau, Vladimir Tarasenko, Jack Eichel, or anybody like that, I probably wouldn't. I'm totally speculating here, but they'd probably all be safely above 20%, or even 30% and 40%, despite the fact that they each have far more reasonable cap hits.

To test that theory, I ran another poll to see just how many players are classified as non-tradeable, like Matthews and presumably McDavid. If there were only a few, then that means people perceive McDavid and Matthews as sort of a 1A and 1B in the world. If that's the perception that people have, then I can definitely understand why they wouldn't want to trade him under any circumstances. In that case, I should have invested more than one paragraph demonstrating that there are few indications that's he's at that level. And, if some of the NHL front offices feel the same way about Matthews, then that means there's a huge possibility of getting a Lindrosian offer for him.

On the other hand, if there are a lot of players who were felt to be non-tradeable, then it's more a philosophical discussion about trading away franchise players in general. However, the results seem to suggest that's not the reason for the first poll's results, and therefore Matthews must be perceived to be in very, very select company of five or fewer players.

Despite those results, some of the objections I saw through social media, on message boards, and in the comments involved a philosophical opposition to the idea of trading franchise players at all. Many felt that Lindros was pretty much the only example of a case where that worked out.

This is really a separate topic but, even if it's true, we need to know why it rarely works out. There are any number of reasons why trading franchise players hasn't worked out in the past (assuming that's the case), and some of them might not apply anymore, nor may they apply to this situation. Just knowing that something hasn't happened in the past (assuming it didn't) isn't enough -- we need to know why. This would be a great future study, no doubt.

Another great topic for future study is whether it makes sense to trade away a franchise centre, especially for a defenseman. To defend this theory, some fans pointed to recent Stanley Cup winners, and argued that almost all of them had a franchise centre.

First of all, it's a matter of opinion just how many recent Stanley Cup winners truly had a franchise centre -- which means they must be among the NHL's top five at that position. Sidney Crosby certainly qualifies, but do Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron, and Jonathan Toews? Perhaps -- but there's an argument either way. I chose top five arbitrarily, because by definition the majority of the 16 playoffs teams are likely to have someone in the top 10.

Secondly, the pool of Stanley Cup winners is pretty small -- just four teams in the past eight years. If we expanded the list to include all Stanley Cup finalists, would we find the same pattern? Last year, two of the four finalists were strong down the middle (Pittsburgh and Anaheim) and two weren't (Nashville and Ottawa). That's still not enough data on which to judge, but if it was true that you MUST have a franchise centre to be a contender, then they should be overwhelmingly present among the finalists, and mostly absent from the early eliminations.

While that's certainly another great study for another day, I can venture an opinion on that right now. In short, my position is that teams should maximize the value of their roster regardless of position. At times, one position or type of player is overvalued and hard to acquire, and at other times they're plentiful and affordable. You need to navigate these "market fluctuations" and assemble the best possible roster at any given time. For most teams and at most times, that won't always include a franchise centre. However, this is a matter of personal opinion, and I don't have any kind of formal study to back it up.

Yes, but not nearly as many as I expected. 

We're getting off topic a little bit, but I didn't want to ignore these types of questions completely, because I do think things have become more civil than they used to be. Years ago, when I worked for Bleacher Report, it was perfectly normal to be subjected to a stream of vulgarities and profanities after even the most benign article, not to mention threats, questions about my sexuality, and detailed accounts of intimate encounters with my mother. I honestly had no idea my mother was so popular until I became a sportswriter. To my knowledge, none of that was the case this past week, so either my mother has settled down, or things have become more civil.

Yes, I got called an idiot, a moron, a troll, and so on, but that's really no big deal. For example, Dean Blundell tweeted that "ESPN’s Rob Vollman Thinks The Leafs Should Trade Auston Matthews. Also Rob Vollman is an idiot." On his website, he proceeded to quote the entire article EXCEPT the conclusion, probably because it didn't fit his narrative. Here's the conclusion:

The most common definition for clickbait is "content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page." I guess the key phrase there is "main purpose", since every article seeks to attract attention and wants to encourage people to check it out. Further research adds some clarifying criteria to this definition, such as it has to be full of ads and designed to increase advertising revenue, and the content itself is usually of no merit whatsoever, and possibly even unrelated to the title.

Since there are no ads on ESPN's website, since I don't get paid by the click, and since the article itself clearly involved a great deal of research (whether you agreed with it or not), it certainly doesn't appear to be clickbait. In fact, nobody who was familiar with me or my work, and very few people who actually read the article classified it as such. I was even honoured when Richard Deitsch tweeted that "I would not deal Auston Matthews. But this was a reported and intellectual look at such a potential deal. Appreciate seeing something smart when I expected a pure page views play." And, in a recent article for The Hockey Writers, Ben Brown wrote that "the article itself was thought-provoking, and there was a lot of statistical analysis to support the premise, but I’m still not buying what Vollman is selling, for various reasons."

However, I can certainly understand how someone would think it was clickbait based solely on the title. If they were unfamiliar with me or my work, and didn't read the actual article, then they would have no way of knowing the difference between this article, and actual clickbait, based on the title alone. For that reason, it's hard to take any of this too personally.

I didn't choose the title ("The Case for Trading Auston Matthews"). In fact, I've never chosen a title. Titles are typically chosen by the site's editor, as are any accompanying photos. Sometimes, the title even changes after an article is published. Obviously, the writer can suggest title, and object to the editor's choices, but this is the standard practice everywhere that I have worked.

I did. On occasion, the editor assigns me a topic, but usually I pitch a variety of ideas, and they pick their favourite one, or a slight variation thereof. In this case, this was my only pitch. It was something I've been meaning to write for awhile, and now seemed like the right time to do it.

Normally, the editor just gives me a red light or a green light, but this time I got a yellow light. He wanted to know more about my particular angle. Once I laid it out, he loved it, and I forged ahead. I also filed it earlier than usual because we wanted to make sure that the arguments were clear and well-defended, and that I struck the right, modest tone.

Still, we weren't ignorant to the reality that it would cause a lot of controversy. If anything, that was a minus, not a plus. But, ESPN does pride itself on offering content that you can't get elsewhere, and you have to admit that they certainly achieve that goal this time. Thanks for reading.

The Pull the Goalie Bot is here!

Inspired by the Fourth Down Bot in football, @ThePullBot calculates the ideal time for the trailing team to pull the goalie in each game, and tweets it out. It also tweets out when the team actually pulled the goalie, and remarks at how the odds of winning the game go up and down as goals are scored on the empty-net, or with the extra attacker.

I've been working in conjunction with my friend Peter Tanner on this initiative, who hosts the awesome MoneyPuck website, where there are more details about how the goalie-pulling calculations are done.

We also collaborated on one Twitter Bot per team that tweets about how the odds of a team winning change with every goal. You can follow just the Bot for your favourite team, or follow all 31. Here's the @LeafsGoalBot, for example.

While it's not a Twitter Bot, one of my favourite gadgets is the player usage chart tool, which the venerable Robb Tufts up to date, which can be accessed in the menu on the left-side of my Hockey Abstract website. He also has some ideas brewing for some extra bells and whistles, so stay tuned.

However, I will talk a little bit about the team-building model that formed part of the basis for the argument. It's a multi-step process that tries to assign a value to each player's contract, based on their contributions over recent seasons, their age, their salary cap charge, and a few other factors. One of the beauties of this model is that the various components can be swapped out and replaced with other perspectives.

For example, the original model used Tom Awad's GVT as the catch-all statistic for each player's contributions (plus Delta, for defensemen). Since then, I've also tried Point Shares, and the WAR model advanced by Andrew Thomas and Sam Ventura, and the one designed by Dawson Sprigings. Well, I finally got around to running the numbers with Emmanuel Perry's WAR model, which is available at Corsica Hockey.

Regardless of the metric used, most teams are not well-positioned over the long term. Why? Because the only players locked down long term are those for whom teams are prepared to pay a premium. I mean, very few players are going to sign a long-term contract at a discount, right? That's why most long-term contracts are either fair, or overpays.

As such, the only teams in positive territory over the long term are Winnipeg, Anaheim, and Carolina -- although Edmonton didn't miss by much. Chicago is definitely in the worst long-term cap position, followed by Detroit and Florida, then a handful of teams like Vancouver, Dadllas, Buffalo, Calgary, Ottawa, and Minnesota.

When looking only at 2017-18, the league mostly sums up to zero, because this will include value-priced contracts, which are normally short-term arrangements. Whether short-term or long-term, the leaders once again include Carolina, Winnipeg, and Anaheim, followed by Edmonton. Montreal, Tampa Bay, Nashville, and Toronto are also in great shape, in the short-term. The team's in the worst cap situation this season include Detroit, Vancouver, Calgary, and Florida.

In terms of individual players, the best value contract is definitely Connor McDavid, no matter what metric you use. Unsurprisingly, he's followed by some really good, young, value forwards like Vladimir Tarasenko, Patrik Laine, Nikita Kucherov, and Nathan MacKinnon, with T.J. Oshie and goalie Braden Holtby in there as well.

At the other end of the spectrum, Aaron Ekblad is surprisingly the contract with the lowest value. Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise, because $7.5 million over the long-term is a pretty hefty sum for someone who isn't in the Norris race, and possibly might not be more than once or twice in that eight-year span. To make matters worse, Keith Yandle is also in the bottom 10.

Brent Seabrook is second-last, and has been near the bottom for years, but it's only recently that people have started to see just how risky that contract has always been. Not all the contracts at the bottom of the list prove to be bad, but it's an interesting exercise to see which ones are worth keeping an eye on.

As part of my recent piece for NHL.com about the members of the Vegas Golden Knights who have over-achieved to the greatest extent, I compared every player's scoring this season to what was expected, based on games played, and on previous career points per game (data from Hockey Reference, one of my very, very favourite resources). 

Needless to say, virtually every member of the Vegas Golden Knights is having a career season. But, it's also interesting to see how players around the league are doing, including the leader, Joshua Bailey of the New York Islanders.

On this list, Karlsson, Marchessault, and Haula all play for the Golden Knights. It's quite remarkable that they hit 60 points at the 41-game mark, when the average expectations was 69 points on the whole season. How many points will they have the rest of the way? Well, certainly less than 60.

I briefly looked at all the other teams to earn at least 60 points in the standings prior to the 41-game mark, and none of them secured 60 points the rest of the way. Teams can get hot early in the year, or late in the year, but no team has been that hot all season.

Of the teams that earned 60 points through the first 41 games, I believe their average result in the final 41 games was around 50. I can't find the files where I did the math but, if I do, I'll update this with a more certain answer.

It's also possible the Golden Knights have been feasting on a relatively weaker division, and wouldn't be doing as well in, oh, say, the Central division. Liam O'Neil (@liam_oneil) added up the goal differential in each division, and the results are eye-opening.

For another look at scoring, I calculated a weighted average of everyone's scoring rate from 2014-15 to 2017-18. I applied double the weight to games played this season to the previous, and then double again down the line. Here are the top 5-on-5 scoring rates for individual players over the past 3.5 years.

Points per 60/minutes (minimum 1,000 minutes played)

I don't think there are any shocking results here, except Bjorkstrand -- but that's probably just a small sample size.

Oh, and one last thing about scoring. I was asked whether some player's scoring results were skewed by getting a lot of opportunities to play at 3-on-3. The answer is no. Over the past three seasons, nobody has scored more than 13 points. That's just 4 or 5 points a season, even in the extreme. So no, nothing is really getting skewed.

It's possible that some goalie data is getting skewed a tiny bit. So, I took a look at that. By the way, this 3-on-3 data, and the previous 5-on-5 scoring rate data, is all from Corsica Hockey website, which is a fantastic resource. But, I think anyone interested enough to follow my blog is probably already well familiar with that!

3-on-3 save percentage (minimum 50 minutes played)

One quick tidbit about goalies: Gord Miller (@GMillerTSN) recently tweeted that of the 80 goalies to play this season, only three catch with their right hand - Domingue, Lindgren, and Mason. Remember the conversation I once had with Darren Pang and Craig Simpson about how certain handedness of shooters have an advantage over certain handedness of goalies, I wonder if this actually boosts certain shooters. Sadly, I can't remember which handedness had an advantage over which!

If you have your copy of Stat Shot handy, flip to page 39. That's the page where there's a re-creation of Eric Tulsky's famous chart that shows the relationship between changes in goal differential, and changes in points. The relationship between the two is uncanny, and works out to one extra point in the standings for every improvement of 2.87 in goal differential.

Well, @bodega_stats has re-created the same charts in some of the European leagues, and discovered that it's much lower in Europe. Specifically, it's 1.44 goals per point in the Swedish league, and 1.895 in the Swiss league. Of course, bear in mind that the scoring system is quite different there.

Also in Europe, Petr Malina (@xpmalina) build one of my beloved player usage charts for the Czech league. I have no idea where he found the data for it, but it's really interesting.

It's a lot of fun to see a lot of the NHL's innovations applied to other leagues. If you love this stuff as I do, then you'll be pleased with my next book, which is set for release September 2018. Unlike Stat Shot, it is not exclusively NHL-focused, and has more content related to the European leagues, U.S. College, and women's hockey.

On the lighter side of things, my year-end poll look at one of my favourite movies, Slap Shot.