Summer and statistics in the ENL

LONDON, UK – The season has ended and for fans and players alike it is a chance to recharge batteries, relax and take advantage of the leisure time freed up by the lack of hockey fixtures. Or is it?
 
There was once a time when news around the ENL would be scarce until around July time but this ‘off season’ has proven to be something of an anomaly for all but a few coaches in the league. Whilst your resident ENL journo/hockey player has been running around Budapest strip clubs in a Hawaiian shirt, bathing naked with French guys in thermal spa’s   and avoiding thieves on sleeper trains through the Czech Republic, some of the other people involved in ENL hockey have been rather more focused on the job ahead.

 
Leading the way is Wightlink Raiders Coach Jeremy Cornish who yet again has signed up most of his squad for the upcoming season with less than two months gone since the end of the last campaign. No less than seven new players have signed up for the 2011/12 campaign on the island including Canadian Chris Jones, Northerners Liam McAllister, Dan Pye and Arran Strawson, Scot Colin McGill, former Peterborough prospect Conor Pollard and ex Bracknell hit man Grant Rounding.
 
More importantly, Cornish has secured the return of All-Star defenseman Dom Hopkins along with Nathan Taylor, Stewart Tait, Damon Larter, Steve Gossett, Kieran Annis, Niall Bound and Alex Murray.
 
Two players who will not be returning to the island are Richie Bentham and Robbie Brown who have switched to the mainland for a season with the Invicta Dynamos. Invicta Coach Kevin Parrish was clearly keen to get hold of two guys who caused his side problems in 2010/11. Also returning to the Silverblades Ice Rink are Jack Tarczycki, Andy Smith, Corey Watkins and mystic meg Anthony Lennon, who is still basking in the glory of predicting a Chelmsford victory in the Play-Off final on the Pro Hockey News player panel.
 
Speaking of Chelmsford, they have upped the stakes massively with the capture of EPL stars Gary Clarke and Dwayne Newman. Joining the two big names are new signings David Wride from Bracknell, Connor Stokes from Peterborough along with returnees Tom Long, Ben Clements and Danny Hammond. Pre-season favourites already? Probably.
 
Newcomers Slough ENL Jets are looking to make an impact as Adam Greener has apparently persuaded the excellent Scott Moody to lace up the skates again and he is rumoured to be joined by former Slough Junior team mates Matt Foord and Adam Bicknell. If those three do appear for the ENL Jets then it would be a big boost to last season’s ENL2 champions.
 
Romford Raiders secured Danny Marshall’s services for another year and he wasted no time bringing back popular Slovak sniper Juraj Huska along with Jason Buckman, Julian Smith and goalies Glen Jackson and Michael Gray. DM6 has also managed to persuade Matt Turner to return to Rom Valley Way from Chelmsford.
 
Richie Hargreaves has been busy at Bristol persuading Cardiff sniper Steve Fisher to join his merry band of men down at Frogmore Street along with James Warman from Telford and former Oxford defenseman Yousif Abu-Saada and Andrew Shurmer. Returnees announced so far include Mike ‘Killer’ Hargreaves, Ali Band and Henrik Sahlin.
 
Cardiff beat Bristol to the signature of Streatham forward Louis Lockwood and also announced defensive duo Gareth Dixon and Neil Browning. Milton Keynes secured the services of Slovak goalscorer Maros Stefanco. Bracknell Hornets announced the return of Danny Hughes as Assistant Player-Coach, along with goalie Adam Marashi, Michael Plenty, Tom Carroll, Alan Lack, Graham Bellamy and another ‘Juraj’ for the league but this time with the surname Chamula.
 
Streatham and Oxford remain the only clubs yet to announce a player for 2011/12 but it is still three months until the first puck drops so all eyes will be on Oxpens and the High Road for the first announcements.
 
So with the summer recruitment drive in full flow across the English National League, one vital ingredient for any potential scouting is of course statistics. Love them or hate them, the stats are what makes the hockey world go round and if you will allow me to digress, please feel free to read on.
 
Let’s start with a confession, I hate statistics and have done from an early age. Maybe it’s because mathematics was always one of my weakest subjects, or maybe as a defenseman I know only too well that the stats barely paint a true picture of players in my position unless of course they include plus/minus scores, which inevitably they rarely do.
 
For a good comparison of how numbers often fail to add up to anything constructive let me take you back to a cold and shabby school class room in the North East of England back in 1995. Sitting in that class room was a fifteen year old child with a dodgy ‘curtains’ haircut and a fondness for   cola bottle sweets (i.e. me).
 
My classmates and I had been given multiple choice forms to complete and once submitted, the numbers would be crunched within a ‘super computer’ to advise the teenagers what potential career route would be most suitable for our working years.
 
A few minutes later we received a print out of advisable careers, and the teacher could only watch as the room descended into laughter as I was advised my best career path would be as a lumberjack, whilst two of my friends were predicted to be a fudge maker and a grave digger. Considering that the North East of England is not covered in vast swathes of forest nor a plethora of fudge factories, one can only assume that the school bought some cut price software from abroad and thought it would be a good idea to fill an hour of teaching time.
 
Incidentally I never did become a lumberjack; however I was once offered a job shovelling snow in Switzerland however that failed to transpire. The overall point being that stats and number crunching do not necessarily produce accurate results.
 
The ‘good’ news this summer however is that last season I sneaked into the top 100 defenseman of the English National League after a barnstorming one goal and three assists in thirty four games – still waiting for a call from Winnipeg. The data comes from the rather excellent statistics website Elite Prospects.com who appear to have raised the bar in online hockey data from the likes of Eurohockey.net and Hockeydb.com. You can check out the list at the link below:
 
http://www.eliteprospects.com/league.php?season=2010&leagueid=ENL&nation=&sort=Defensemen
 
Now being rated 96th best defenseman in the English National League does not bother me one bit. In fact regular readers of my column will testify that there are no delusions of grandeur on my part, however I do think defensemen get a raw deal with statistics.
 
As stated earlier, probably the best measurement of a defenseman comes with plus/minus scores but even these are vulnerable to anomalies. Normally kept locally by an assistant coach or third eye, the plus/minus measures how many goals a player was on the ice for, whether they be goals for or goals against.
 
Fans sometimes pay attention to this as well, however in most cases the strength of a goal scored far outweighs the amount of goals the player conceded in the supporter’s eyes. In 2008/09 I was involved in a game playing for Haringey Greyhounds where we got hammered something like 8-1 on home ice. One of our defenseman got our only goal and thus earned a number of plaudits on the online supporters forum following the match saying how well he had played, clearly ignoring the fact that he had probably been on the ice for seven of the goals scored and arguably directly responsible for four of them. Statistics eh?!
 
I suppose the most surprising thing judging by the Top 100 list is that a number of guys near the top are not your typical rushing defenseman and are in fact steady stay at home guys. Players like Dom Hopkins (ranked 1), Danny Wright (ranked 8) and Damon Larter (ranked 17) all feature in the top twenty yet are solid blue liners unlikely to go coast to coast or get caught searching for glory rather than keeping their defensive responsibility. The thing they all share in common however is their power play minutes (not shown on the stats) and all three of those guys get plenty involvement in such situations which will always help the points tally.
 
A piece on statistics would not be complete without the merits of assists. No other part of the standard statistical breakdown is as subjective and random as the ‘apple’ as it is sometimes referred as. In theory the assist is such a beautiful thing as it rewards a player in equal terms to a goal scorer for the hard work or skill in setting up a goal.
 
In fact it can be best summed up courtesy of its very own Wikipedia entry:
 
“In ice hockey, an assist is attributed to up to two players of the scoring team who shot, passed or deflected the puck towards the scoring teammate, or touched it in any other way which enabled the goal, meaning that they were “assisting” in the goal.
 
“There can be a maximum of two assists per goal. The assists will be awarded in the order of play, with the last player to pass the puck to the goal scorer getting the primary assist and the player who passed it to the primary assister getting the secondary assist. Players who gain an assist will get one point added to their player statistics”
 
The last sentence in particular begs the question, just how do you gain an assist? Well first of all you have to hope that the referee spots your pass for starters, and then you have to hope that your team mate didn’t advise the ref incorrectly when asked for clarification and lastly you have to hope that the game sheet gets filled in correctly and that the league statistician does not make an error.
 
So in short, it can be a lottery as to whether you get your assist or you don’t, and to some players this is important and others not so much. As a player uninterested in such issues given that hockey is not my livelihood, I do find one of the most cringe worthy sights in hockey the scene after a goal is scored, is when players follow the ref back to the time-keepers bench shouting for assists. Fair enough if he asks but in most cases he knows who passed the puck.
 
Back to the ENL and indeed it seems that there are interesting times ahead. The league AGM happens soon and this will no doubt bring more talking points. As the season draws closer we will be talking to all of the league’s characters on their league hopes however if you are interested in any particular issue or have any feedback on our ENL coverage last season, or what you would like to see this coming season, feel free to drop me a mail at the email address below.
 
Contact the author david.carr@prohockeynews.com