Team Goal and Shot Differentials - Winter 2014 Season

by Owen E.

Here are some stats and observations around goals and shots for the 2014 Winter DCHL season...

Goal and Shot Differentials

One indicator of a team's combined offensive and defensive performance is to look at goal and shot differentials on a per game basis.  To try to visualize this, I've added some new chart types to show these stats this season.

To define these stats, goal differential is the difference between goals for and goals against; likewise, shot differential is the difference between shots taken and shots allowed.  These stats each combine one aspect of a team's performance on both offense and defense into a single metric.

If a team has a good offense (gets lots of shots and/or goals) and good defense (allows few shots and/or goals) it will likely have a relatively large positive number in one or both of these stats.  If they have a good offense, but struggle a bit on defense (or vice versa) they may have a small positive or small negative values.  If a team struggles on both sides of the floor they will likely have larger negative values.

A small positive number in either of these stats can still be considered "good," since the team is still doing slightly better offensively than defensively (which can be enough to win games); however, negative numbers in one or both stats means that the team gives up more goals/shots than they allow in a game, which is usually trouble.

Teams that defy these expectations are interesting.  For example, a team with a large negative shot differential, but positive goal differential may take few shots, but the high quality of those shots results in more goals than expected and enough goals to win their games.  Additionally, their defense may allow many low-quality shots resulting in fewer goals than expected for the number of shots.  It also might be that the team has an exceptional goaltender who saves a high percentage of shots.

Here are some numerical examples:

• a Goal Differential of +3.1 means that, over the course of a season, that team scored about three more goals than their opponents in each game.
• a Shot Differential of -7.8 means that, over the course of a season, that team allowed almost eight more shots than they took in each game.

Some of the interesting things that jump out of the numbers are listed below the charts (SD = shot differential, GD = goal differential).  The charts are sorted by shot differential.

Click charts to enlarge.





Observations on PRO

• Only three PRO teams (~40% of teams) have positive GDs (TAB, PB, Ducks)
• Ducks have a slightly negative SD (they allow more shots than they take), but the 2nd highest GD.
• Both Funks and Bloods have significant positive SDs, but slightly negative GDs
• PB significantly outshoot their opponents (although not as drastically as TAB outshoot theirs), and typically beat their opponents by 5 goals.
• Puck Buddies and TAB are at the top of PRO in both stats, but each holds the #1 position in one of the stats.  PB have a lower SD than TAB, but a GD that is more than twice TAB's.  This is likely an indicator of the quality of the shots taken by PB.
• Snakes have the worst SD, but DCP have the worst GA.

Observations on REC

• In contrast to PRO, 6 teams (60%) have a positive GD; however, both stats have larger ranges in PRO.
• GD range is -3.3 to +5.2 in PRO, but only -1.8 to +1.6 in REC
• SD range is -17 to +14 in PRO, but only -11 to +9 in REC
• Boogies have the 2nd worst SD in REC, but the 2nd best GD.

Here are the numbers in tabular format, again sorted by shot differential.