The Stars, Caps & Funny Math In The Scorer's Box
Tomes have been written about the problems with home scorer bias and home scorer errors, especially as pertains to the NHL's RTSS statistics. Edmonton's official scorers are notorious for over-counting (making up?) giveaways:
The league leaders in giveaways are none other than your Edmonton Oilers, who have been charged with a scandalous 972 such turnovers, nearly triple the 359 charged to the Blue Jackets. Not surprisingly, most of this discrepancy can be found on home ice, where trigger-happy statisticians have charged the Oil with 737 giveaways, compared to just 235 on the road.
A look at the early season RTSS data shows Edmonton's official scorers aren't allow in over-counting RTSS numbers, the boys in the box at the Verizon Center and American Airlines Center are trigger-happy on the "record hit" button.
Below is a breakdown of every NHL team by home hits per game and road hits per game. We're early in the season, so a game against a stingy scorer could impact the numbers. There's likely a lot of noise in the middle of these numbers, but the scorers at the top have counting issues.
| Team | Home Hits/Game | Road Hits/Game | Δ |
| Washington Capitals | 29.4 | 15.0 | 14.4 |
| Dallas Stars | 35.8 | 23.6 | 12.3 |
| Phoenix Coyotes | 26.4 | 19.2 | 7.2 |
| Vancouver Canucks | 26.0 | 18.8 | 7.2 |
| Chicago Blackhawks | 21.4 | 14.3 | 7.1 |
| Los Angeles Kings | 27.1 | 21.6 | 5.5 |
| Long Island Islanders | 22.1 | 17.0 | 5.1 |
| Detroit Red Wings | 23.6 | 19.2 | 4.4 |
| Montreal Canadiens | 21.9 | 17.7 | 4.2 |
| Florida Panthers | 20.8 | 17.2 | 3.7 |
| Toronto Maple Leafs | 23.1 | 19.5 | 3.6 |
| San Jose Sharks | 18.8 | 15.4 | 3.4 |
| Carolina Hurricanes | 23.1 | 20.0 | 3.1 |
| Ottawa Senators | 24.3 | 21.8 | 2.4 |
| Tampa Lightning | 22.2 | 20.1 | 2.1 |
| Philadelphia Flyers | 21.8 | 19.9 | 1.9 |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | 26.2 | 24.8 | 1.4 |
| Nashville Predators | 19.0 | 17.7 | 1.3 |
| Buffalo Sabres | 17.9 | 17.7 | 0.2 |
| Calgary Flames | 17.5 | 18.7 | -1.2 |
| Minnesota Wild | 21.7 | 23.8 | -2.1 |
| Boston Bruins | 21.3 | 23.6 | -2.2 |
| St. Louis Blues | 20.2 | 22.9 | -2.7 |
| Pittsburgh Penguins | 20.5 | 23.5 | -2.9 |
| Winnipeg Jets | 20.8 | 23.7 | -3.0 |
| Colorado Avalanche | 19.2 | 22.5 | -3.2 |
| New York Rangers | 23.8 | 27.3 | -3.6 |
| Edmonton Oilers | 15.3 | 20.0 | -4.7 |
| Anaheim Ducks | 19.9 | 25.4 | -5.4 |
| New Jersey Devils | 15.3 | 24.6 | -9.3 |
The Capitals average twice as many hits at home as they do on the road. Either they forget how to play hockey on the road, or their official scorer naps with his face on the "hit" key. The Stars are a physical team, as the Oilers recently found out, but their official scorer might want to take a second look at his definition of a hit.
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Any reason for not doing the absolute value of delta? NJD at -9.3 seems pretty egregious.
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I wanted to delineate the undercounters from the overcounters.
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I get that, but NJD seems worth mentioning in your analysis of awful score counters is all.
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I could’ve mentioned Phoenix and Vancouver too, but I went with the low-hanging fruit.
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IIRC, Dallas is always this bad. Surprised that the Rangers are negative so far, they’re usually overcounted as well.
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Perhaps the Rangers are…soft and need a fighter?
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If I’m understanding this, MIN’s official scorer has straightened up, meaning Cal Clutterbuck really is making all those hits, or maybe even more than he’s being credited for?
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He’s back in the middle of the pack, which is good. There’s too much noise in the middle and the sample size is too small, which is why I said the guys out on the ends are the ones we can be relatively sure are blind or eager to please their GMs.
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Are these guys employed by the individual teams or by the league? If it’s by the teams, you’d think that they’d find a bunch of under-counters to help them out in negotiations. Better to re-sign guys in the middle of the pack in hits or blocked shots than guys leading the way.
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by Scott Reynolds on Nov 29, 2011 6:39 PM MST up reply actions
I don’t think RTSS are allowed in arbitration.
Editor of The Copper & Blue, and leader of The Cult Of Hartikainen.
Whether or not they’re allowed in Arb hearings, guys like Clutterbuck and Zanon build reputations on hits/blocks/what have you. There’s definitely an incentive for teams to artificially make their players look like dogshit. If I were a GM I’d be doing everything legally possible to make sure my official scorers under-count my team’s hits, blocked shots, shots against, takeaways, etc.
by Passive Voice on Nov 29, 2011 7:35 PM MST up reply actions
Right, but arbitration makes up 1% of player signings, so his point still stands.
As far as I know, the people are employed by the teams.
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The Stars home statistician has always been a bit trigger happy.
Razor talked about it this morning on the radio, although there’s no doubt the team certainly is physical.
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No doubt. But probably something like “second-most physical team in the league”, not “most physical team in the league by 10 hits per game”
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