Hot Coals: Value of Passing

There's been a lot of pretty cool work done on passing-related analysis lately.  

First, Ben Wendorf at Behind The Net had a look at the value of second assists for defensemen.

Neil Greenberg mentioned another article on twitter, this one from the Stat DNA blog, showing the improved probability of scoring when passes were completed from one zone of a soccer field to another.

Finally, if you haven't been reading Eric T's series on Zone Entries at Broad Street Hockey, this article is a good one to start with.

Soccer seems to be really driving a lot of statistics in this manner, especially if you look at items like the Guardian's chalkboards, shown here analyzed by Michael Cox of Zonal Marking.  I would love to see tools like this developed for hockey, it can provide a ton of insight on zone control, attack patterns, and success from different angles of attack.

by Ryan Popilchak