Ms. Hockey Semifinalists Commentary

A few thoughts. First, congrats to all 10 of the semifinalists for the 2020 Ms. Hockey Award. Everyone is very deserving. Second, it is too bad there is room for only 10 names. Because there are many others that are equally deserving. I am curious as to how they (not sure who ‘they’ are) determine the 10 semifinalists. When I first saw the list there were 2 glaring omissions that immediately came to mind. And that got me thinking. How do you quantify each player’s stats beyond just goals and assists? How do you quantify their value to their team and the results of the team? How do you account for the strength of schedule relative to the total points? So being of average intellect this is what I came up with. I know there are many holes in this but the list just came out today and this is my best effort. So cut me some slack, alright?! Okay? Great. Thanks for that.

So I took the names of the 10 semifinalists and added the two I thought should’ve been there then added two more for good measure. I came up with the following criteria:

1. Number of Games Played vs. Top 20 ranked team according to KRACH.
2. The average KRACH ranking of their opponents.
3. Average Points Per Game vs. Top 20 ranked teams
4. Goals in relation to their team’s goal leader or if they are the leader then related to the next highest goal total. For example, if Player A has 20 goals and the next most on the team is 15 then they would have 133% more goals than the next most. If Player A has 15 goals and the team leader has 20 then they have 75%.
5. Assists in relation to their team leader or in relation to the next highest total on the team. See #4.
6. Points Per Game in relation to their team leader or in relation to the next highest total on the team. I don’t need to say “see #5” do I?
7. Percentage of Points that come on the power play. The less points you scored on the PP relative to your total points the better the player ranks.
8. Points Per Game/Team Points Per Game. The more PPG you account for relative to your team’s total PPG the better the player ranks.
9. Finally, I took into consideration where the player’s team ranked in the final regular season KRACH ranking.

This rudimentary method should account for strength of schedule, team success, importance to the player’s team, and, to a degree, accounts for some players missing games due to USA Hockey obligations. What I could not figure out was how to adjust the rankings for a player playing defense rather than forward. So I simply gave defenders a multiplier of 1.5. Top ranking in a category got the player 14 points. Conversely, bottom ranking got the player 1 point.

Here are the final results:

You will find it interesting that the 4 players highlighted in yellow are not semifinalists. The two highest rated players that are highlighted in yellow were the two omissions that stuck out to me immediately.

Anyway, I found this very interesting. Food for thought.