Analyze This: Righties vs. Lefties

Summer (Year?) Of Hockey Analytics (#fancystats) continues: Tyler Dellow (aka @mc79hockey) leaving blogging world to work for an NHL club.
— Bob McKenzie (@TSNBobMcKenzie) August 5, 2014

The summer/year of analytics. I dig that.

For those who don't know, most advanced stats track how good a hockey player is at maintaining possession of the puck and generating shots on goal for himself or his team mates while on the ice. Others look at shooting and save percentages that are unsustainable (Gustav Nyquist last year), the quality of players a player faces during his shifts, and what zone of the ice a player starts his shift in.

It's all useful stuff that a lot of people who work in or cover the NHL initially seemed opposed to accepting as being anything more than junk.

Really, as a teacher, I think it was just not presented in enough different ways for everyone to see it for what it was: useful information when judging a player's performance.

I've personally used advanced stats to help my fantasy hockey teams the past several years, and have had a lot of success doing so.

However, one thing that there isn't a lot of information on is how a player/team is affected by having a player play his "off position". By "off position", I'm referring to a player who shoots left and is playing right wing or right defense. I'm not sure that this will ever be something that can be measured, but I would be very interested to see attempts to do so.

Personally, I feel as if it has a negative impact, but more so on defense. This would then be a problem for the Detroit Red Wings, who are once again going into the season with seven defensemen signed to NHL contracts who are all left-handed shooters. In fact, unless Daniel Alfredsson returns, the only player on the team that currently shoots right is fourth-line-center-at-best Luke Glendening.

I'm not sure how one would even go about trying to evaluate having a player playing his off position versus his regular position, but I really wish someone who knows a lot more about evaluating players with statistics would give it a stab. My eye test tells me that there is a disadvantage though.