A Wrap on Olympic Hockey

So, What's the Story from the Gold Medal?

At a Glance

• Introduction
• Where Did Our Analysis Go Wrong?
• So, What's the Story?

Introduction

The Four Nations Face-Off laid the groundwork for a newsletter we did earlier this year. It also was the impetus for the latest online course module entitled Discovering Who Will Win the Gold Medal for Men's Hockey in our Sports, AI and Storytelling Living Course.

Interested in Sports, AI and Storytelling? Check out our Stories page, where you'll find projects to help level up your sports storytelling skills.

Yesterday, the Olympics Gold Medal came to its conclusion, and while we were right in our prediction about Canada meeting the USA in the Gold round, we were wrong in our prediction that Canada would take home the Gold. Team USA defied both our forecast and the recent odds from the sports books and took the gold medal.

The result? Team USA won in overtime by a score of 2-1 with Jack Hughes scoring the game-winning goal. The NHL had this to say:

...he scored one of the most dramatic goals in Olympic hockey history, 1:41 into overtime to give Team USA a 2-1 win against Team Canada...The goal, off a pass from Zach Werenski during 3-on-3 play, slid through the five-hole of Canada goalie Jordan Binnington and delivered the much-awaited gold medal for this American squad, placing it on the same pedestal as the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team.

So, yeah, we were close but reality deviated from our analysis somewhere along the way.

But where?

Where Did Our Analysis Go Wrong?

Regarding our initial analysis, we evaluated the teams across five key areas and ranked the teams first and second based on the metrics. The five metrics were Puck Possession, Shot Capabilities, Point Production, Physicality, and Goaltending.

We also used NHL player and goalie data to evaluate the four teams that participated in the Four Nations Face-Off (often heralded as the four top medal contenders in the Olympics).

However, there were three significant variables that factored into the game.

1. Sidney Crosby was out of the lineup because of an injury during the game with Czechia.
2. Hellebuyck stood on his head in net.
3. Missed opportunities by Team Canada.

Let's explore each of these.

Losing Sidney Crosby

First, losing Sidney Crosby was not just an impact to point production, but it must have been a moral loss as well. Crosby is a superstar and a leader in the NHL. He was also Team Canada's captain. We did a point-in-time analysis, which didn't account for injuries.

Team USA's Goaltending

Second, Hellebuyck played absolutely amazing. In fact, for more than half the game Canada had Team USA on their heels. They continually pressed in the offensive zone, but Hellebuyck was a key variable that held up to their pressure. Here's an amazing photo of one save that Fox News characterized as heroic with his "miracle stick."

And it's not just the saves that impact the scoreboard; not being able to convert through their pressure must have been both frustrating and exhausting for Team Canada.

Missed Opportunities

And third, Canada had multiple missed opportunities that would have tilted the game in the opposite direction. Today's game was a game of millimeters, bouncing pucks and odd calls and rules. But like it or not, that's hockey.

Post game, there was some opining on the 3 on 3 overtime rule in the Olympics medal round. Admittedly, this was strange; however, teams have to adapt to the tournament rules. And there was a hell of a lot that preceded the 3 on 3 overtime that could have avoided a 3 on 3 overtime – e.g., converting on the aforementioned missed opportunities, avoiding double-minor penalties, refs missing calls such as too many men, etc., etc.

But, we digress.

All told:

• The data told us that Crosby was a significant contributor to the success of Team Canada. But it didn't tell us that there'd be an awkward check that would take him out of the tournament. This made a difference.
• The data also told us that Team USA's goaltending was good – and with strong attribution to Hellebuyck. So, we knew he was good. But, he was outstanding in the medal game. This made a difference.
• Finally, the data also told us that Team USA were second to Canada in terms of point production. And when comparing Shots on Goal (SOG) - 42 to Canada to Team USA's 28, the difference was significant. What made the difference here was Hellebuyck.

So, in sum losing a team captain, a goalie having a stellar game and unlucky bounces were key differentiators in this game.

What About the Analysis?

When it comes to the analysis, as we mentioned earlier it was a point-in-time analysis – one that we did prior to the start of the Olympics. So, it wasn't a predictive model, so to speak; it was more a directional analysis. But, if we were to it differently, how might we roll?

From an analysis perspective, we might have only focused on Shot Strength, Point Production, and Goaltending. This would remove our custom metrics out of the mix and only focused on a core set of tried and true hockey statistics.

Second, we would have used the analysis as a baseline and built a predictive model that we'd update after each game in the Olympics. This would have been an additional step, but it would have given us a baseline (initial analysis) and a predictive model (updated each day).

This may be obvious, but it's important to note that when you're building predictive models, it's not a one-and-done affair. You take your dataset and algorithm (i.e., your approach) and you run the model and update the numbers after every game. As you do this, the updated model refactors dynamically based on who's in and who's out (you exclude injured players in the updated models). You can also add a 'weighting' based on over- or under-performance by a team based on how they're playing.

So, What's the Story?

We spent a lot of time here and in the run-up to the final laid out more of a learning instrument rather than a story. This gives you a specific view of what data we had going into the event. You can see the carousel slides below.

But, this is not really a story; it's a summary.

If we were to write a story today, it'd be focused more on the things that broke our prediction rather than the data that substantiated a claim. That is, we'd do a feature on Connor Hellebuyck and focus on the pivotal moments where he stopped Canada that led to Team USA winning the Gold Medal.

And the stat? We'd use the fact that Canada had a 1.5 SOG Ratio to Team USA, but they couldn't break through.

That's it.

In Closing

Yesterday's game was heartbreaking to watch. It was some of the best hockey players in the world representing their countries playing for the gold medal. And if you step away from who won or lost a medal, it was some of the best hockey we've seen in a while. The puck moved up and back with lightening speed and precision; penalties made us nervous; cross-ice passing and breakouts were tape-to-tape; and goaltending was outstanding.

Sure. If the puck had bounced differently a couple of times, Canada would be the ones with the gold medals right now. But today, Hellebuyck deserves a ton of credit.