You may have seen the WARRIOR, and the single person counter part HERO, charts used here at Jets Nation before. We used quite a few of them in our last article discussing the Evander Kane trade and the pending status of Dustin Byfuglien and Andrew Ladd.

Afterwards there were some questions about the charts, so I thought I go over them briefly and then show some things they can indicate and help with.

The WARIOR and HERO charts are excellent ways to get a cursory look of a player and their on-ice impacts in some of the most commonly used metrics for player evaluations. Both charts, constructed by Domenic Galamini, look at a player’s numbers in areas like ice time, production rates, and relative shot differentials, with the added context on how these numbers scale up against the NHL competition.

TOI%: A player’s ice time is measured in terms of percentage of 5v5 time available that the player is given for the games they are dressed.

Primary P/60: A player’s primary point production looks at goal scoring (Goals/60) and primary assist rates (First A/60) relative to their ice time, as per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice time. Secondary assists are ignored as they tend to be impacted by noise and highly variable year-to-year for an individual.

CD/60 Rel Team: This is the one that sometimes confuses people, although many figure out it has to do with Corsi. As most are starting to understand, Corsi is the name used to represent shot differentials when including all types of shots (goals, saves, misses, and blocks). Corsi tends to have a stronger relationship with future 5v5 goal differentials than past 5v5 goal differentials for both teams and players. Often we look at Corsi in terms of a percentage (team shots for / all shots), but here it is being looking at differential (team shots for – team shots against). The “Rel Team” term means relative to teammates, where we look at how a player’s teammates perform with the player on the ice versus how they perform away from the player.

There are some differences between WARRIOR and HERO charts. Galamini on his website puts the differences neatly in a table here:

The two biggest differences is WARRIOR charts are regressed and use weighted averages.

The regressed portion decreases the high volatility of personal and team shooting percentages in goals, assists, and point production.

The weighted average is how Galamini combines data from multiple seasons, but keeps the more recent data more relevant. Ice time weighs the season selected as 78 per cent of the weight, with the last season as the remainder. The other metrics use 44 per cent for this season, then 31 and 25 for the next two.

Now, these fancy graphics are great for a surface level look but they are not a complete representative of a player. These are only a few measured outcomes that look at how a team and their linemates perform with a player, but not the reasoning why players derive those results.

Even from a purely statistical standpoint, the charts do not cover all the outputs we currently use today. Some examples of missed value are a penalty differentials and outputs in special teams situations.

Now, for one example of usage, here are the Jets two primary defensive pairs:

You may see a pattern; the two pairs have similar weaknesses and strengths. 

If you look at the past, when the four players tended to play with different defensive partners, you’ll find the same strengths and weaknesses show up. While the past is less extreme for them, both Dustin Byfuglien and Jacob Trouba excel in promoting shot production, while Tyler Myers and Tobias Enstrom are better at suppressing opponent shot attempts.

The current construction of the Jets defensive pairs forces specialized deployment for optimizing the pairs, but history indicates that any attainable deployment differences for big minute skaters over the spread of a season is going to be marginal at best.

These numbers suggest that Enstrom and Myers should be split up, with perhaps Myers playing with Trouba and Enstrom with Byfuglien. While there may be certain reasons why the Jets have the current format, this would likely extend from their individual subjective weighting of inputs (such as breakouts, or who likes to carry the puck). However, inputs are only a means to an ends, and the outputs are a measure of those ends.

If you wish to look at these charts yourself, check them out here.