Average Time on Ice VS Goals Scored

Mills, Katie
5/24/2017
INTRODUCTION

Our group is comparing statistics in hockey. We comparing goals scored with other data.

This paper explores the relationship between goals scored and average time on ice per game of

the top 30 centres in the 2016-2017 NHL season. I chose this topic to learn more about a

subject I know very little on. By researching statistics in hockey I hoped to learn more about the

sport and enjoy it more.

BACKGROUND

In order to be more precise we kept our data as uniform as possible. We made sure to

only use centres so that the difference in position would not affect the amount of goals scored.

We also made sure that we all used the same top 30 players from the same season. This is

important because it allows us to compare our data with each other. This paper focuses on the

average time on ice per game per player compared to the amount of goals scored in the

season. Average time on ice refers to the amount of time the players are on the ice for. In

hockey, players play in shifts to allow them to rest and different players to take over. Generally

shifts tend to be about 45 seconds long, but defense players often have longer shifts. Usually

the longer the average time on ice is, the better the player is. With this in mind I compared the

amount for goals scored with the average time on ice to look for a correlation.

FINDING AND USING DATA

The data for NHL statistics is located on the NHL official website. Statisticians have

already compiled data for number of goals scored, -/+, average time on ice per game and other

data. Before making my graphs I had to convert the average time on ice per game from minutes
and seconds to just seconds. This involved multiplying every minute by 60 then adding the

remaining seconds. The NHL website also let us sort by many different variables, including

position of the player, what teams they play for, what season we want the data from, and

whether a player was a veteran or a rookie. Using this information we were able to decide as a

group under what restrictions we wanted to view our data. We were able to sort the

information according to position played and chose the top 30 centres. This way our group not

only had the same data to work with, but our conclusions from the data would be more

accurate.

Player Average Time Played per game (s) Goals Scored

Sidney Crosby 1200 44
Auston Mathews 1057 40
Richard Rackell 1053 33
Evegni Malkin 1125 33
Jeff Carter 994 32
Nazem Kadri 1081 32
Mark Scheifele 1241 32
Connor McDavid 1014 30
Jonathan Marchessault 1275 30
Joe Pavelski 1141 29
Leon Draisaitl 1155 29
John Tavares 1116 28
Eric Staal 1233 28
Sean Monahan 1063 27
Kyle Turris 1178 27
Tyler Seguin 1107 26
Mikael Granlund 1137 26
Brayden Schenn 1056 25
Logan Couture 1068 25
Jack Eichel 1203 24
Vincent Trocheck 959 23
David Krejci 1095 23
Nicklas Backstrom 1095 23
Patrik Berglund 1257 23
Mikael Backlund 960 22
 Ryan Kesler 1056 22
Artem Anisimov 1070 22
William Nylander 1286 22
Patrice Bergeron 1173 21
Jonathan Toews 1217 21

TREND ANALYSIS

Goals Scored vs Time on Ice

50
45
40
35
30
25 Linear (Goals Scored)
20 Expon. (Goals Scored)

15 y = 0.0009x + 26.417
10 R² = 0.0002
y = 26.535e1E-05x
5
R² = 4E-05
0
0 500 1000 1500

The trends presented in this graph are very weak and slightly positive. There appears to

be little to no correlation between the number of goals scored and the amount of time on ice.

There appears to be a couple outliers in the group with more goals scored than any other

players but their time on ice is in the middle range. The time on ice per player also has a large

range, going between approximately 1000 seconds and 1300 seconds.

 DISTRUBUTION OF DATA

Total
7
6
5
Frequency

4
3
2
1
0

Range of Average Time on Ice Per Game

The most frequent range is 1050-1079 seconds. There is a left skew to the graph but

then a sudden drop off after the max frequency value. Other than the most frequent range the

rest of the ranges seem to be around the same frequency. One of the higher outliers form the

previous graph falls into the largest frequency range of 1050-1079 seconds, while the other falls

under one of the less frequent ranges, 1230-1259 seconds. This indicates that the average time

on ice and the number of goals scored are not correlated.

Time on Ice

Series3
Series4
Series5
0 500 1000 1500

Average Time on Ice (s)

 IQR for this graph is 136 and the outliers are any number under 845.5 seconds and

anything over 1398.5 seconds meaning that I have no outliers in my data.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion there is no correlation between average time on ice per game and the

amount of goals scored in a season. This goes against what we first assumed about the data.

Usually the amount of time on ice is linked to how useful a player is to the team, if they aren’t

as good they won’t play as often. What this data shows us is that the time on the ice is not

related to how many goals the player may score. This could mean that the value of the player

could be measured in different ways then how many goals scored. It could be related to how

many assists are made, or their endurance. If a player is very good but has low endurance they

would have less time on the ice then another player even though they are more valuable. This

data points to other factors that affect the time on ice and the goals scored in a season, but it

shows that the two variables are not heavily related.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Official Site of the National Hockey League. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2017, from

https://www.nhl.com/