Ben Csiernik

Through my first five games tracked of my women’s college hockey model we have seen 24 goals on 23.55 expected goals so at this point I think I’m done collecting data because this is probably the peak.

I gave an entire conference talk on why this is, inherently, a less than optimal approach to any powerplay, let alone a powerplay featuring William Nylander and Austin Matthews.

I gave a talk this summer at a coaches conference on distance shots in hockey and their incredibly low likelihood of actually being deflected and going in.

Let me tell you, the coaches love deflections.

So a breakaway lapse being ~twice as costly in soccer relative to hockey feels intuitively right to me.

I wouldn’t be surprised if hockey saw twice as many of these plays on average as well.

Makes total sense. Hockey just copies soccer but 7 years behind anyways so why would this be any different.

Thank you for your service 🫡

Since goaltending error is probably incredibly subjective, is there a universal “that can’t go in” type of goal that happens relatively frequently?

I can think of a couple situations in hockey.

Oh now that’s a fun question, isn’t it. Do we have a soccer equivalent to the unscreened 50 foot wrist shot going straight in?

Big chance breakaways in soccer simply have to be scored more than in hockey. I think NHL breakaways hover around 25-30% scoring percentage but I’m less familiar with the soccer numbers

An image that depicts the WHIMS model, that stands for The Women's Hockey Insight Model for Scoring

We're hoping that this research will be able to provide data defining how scaling hockey environments may support players and goalies.

As an added bonus, this award allows me to also continue our work in women's hockey, specifically in player development and evaluation, and scoring!

In the past few years, there's been a lot of pushback against hockey governing bodies for trying to implement modifications to youth hockey. Meanwhile, hockey is one of the only major sports in the world that doesn't have a clearly defined and progressive development plan.

Specifically, we want to know how decision making and actions change for young hockey players when we change the environment, conditions, and rules of the game. What happens to passing and scoring when we make the net smaller, or the ice smaller, or put fewer players in play.

Ben is affiliated with Ontario Tech University, and his doctoral thesis is titled: Analyzing the impact of scaling on decision making, and development: An international comparative study in youth ice hockey.

Given that the new school year is starting, I'm thrilled to share that I was selected as part of the final class of SHRC Vanier Scholars! This scholarship supports our work on trying to better understand what the best development pathway is for young hockey players.

Squeaking out an extra 0.002 on the AUC for every increase in distance we get from an updated version.
XGboost remains going brr

Hello welcome to the Hudl experience how can I help you.

I think it’s most entertaining when the same crowd forgets the importance of asking how pucks go in, in a thoughtful manner (e.g. David Clarkson).

Nik Ehlers is worth a lot more than this but teams don’t like the way he looks when he backchecks and I’m sure there’s also something about “grit”.

A little bit of science published on Canada Day.

Big summer Saturday over here where we’re drawing hockey practice drills for academic articles on team practice learning design.

Are 2 on 1s peer reviewed? Makes you think.

Even if Mitch Marner goes to free agency as seems likely, the biggest prize will be Nik Ehlers:

It brings me great joy when players enter outside of your colour “line quality” tiers.

The right skewed distribution of the best of the best rocks.

I do all my work in R but have started with some Python things and oh boy does the tidyverse do an unbelievable amount of things simpler/easier/better than numpy and pandas.

Any person with an expected goals model knows the feeling of having the game almost perfectly match the result.

A win for the numbers

Had a ton of fun this past weekend sharing some of our research on goaltending, practice design, and team offensive tactics.

Bonus fun getting to speak about some of what I consider seminal work by @allthreezones.bsky.social and @hockeyviz.com

Reading legends is important, who knew.

Curious if we see weaker teams have goalies with more rebound chances given up (as Nashville’s slightly declined)?

This is great Sean, thank you for bringing attention to it.

Goaltending behaviors and how we scale the game for younger goalies is the central topic of my PhD. We’ve just finished a case study and pilot project on it, and looking forward to getting the work in the hands of the public!

I coach multiple children under 10 years old who are better skaters than I was when I played Collegiate hockey in the early/mid 2010s

This is super cool! But all I really want is for kids to love hockey and goaltending, and I am nervous every single day that they aren’t on that path.

This is a perfect example of how to not play a 2 on 1 that supports a goalie.

By sliding over to the pass option, leafs gives Jones a direct line to the net. Causes Woll to get stuck in an awkward waiting cycle where it’s a mini breakaway with maybe still a pass. D needs to stay short post.

This is pretty cool stuff!

Very pedantic question, but what is the basis of “talent” here? I work in the academic side of talent ID and selection and it’s an impossibly inconsistent word especially in a measurement context

As if there was ever a doubt. Dusty in here.