A Statistical Analysis of Team Defense and Performance in the National Hockey League

Year 2018, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 235 - 244, 22.06.2018

Andy W. Chen

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the relationship between goalkeeper and team performance in
professional hockey using statistical models. The model is evaluated by checking for outliers
and major assumptions of the ordinary least squares regression model. I find a negative
relationship between goals allowed per game and total team points per season. In particular, I
find that the intercept of the model to be 184.0 and coefficient for average goals allowed per
game to be -33.819. This means that when goals allowed per game increases by 0.1, the total
points for a team in a season will decrease by 3.38. The assumptions of the linear regression
model are satisfied. 

Keywords

Hockey, Sports Analytics, Statistics, Linear Regression, Ordinary Least Squares

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