NHL Team Power Play Perfomance in 2022-2023

Measures for National Hockey League teams from all 5 on 4 power plays in the 2022-2023 season.

Motivation

Certain infractions in a hockey game can lead to one or more players being forced to sit out for a period of time while their team has to skate with fewer payers. A common scenario that results is a 5 on 4 power play where one team has five skates (plus a goalie) and the penalized team has only four skaters (plus a goalie). The team with fewer skates is said to be shorthanded. Typical penalty times are for two minutes and the penalized player is allowed to return to the ice if the opponent scores a goal while on the power play. Rare, but more serious infractions, produce a major penalty (5 minutes) where the penalized player is not allowed to return to the ice when a goal is scored. A power play can also end before two minutes when the team on the power play commits a penalty which results in one of its players being sent off the ice to even the sides.

This dataset shows information for all 32 National Hockey League (NHL) teams based on their performance while on a 5 on 4 power play in the 2022-2023 regular season. Goals scored, shots on goals, and hits are all scaled to give a count of these events for every full two minutes of a power play.

Data

Each row of data gives power play statistics for one of the 32 National Hockey League teams from the 2022-2023 regular season.

NHL_PowerPlay2022.csv

Variable	Description
team	Name of the team
goals_per_2_min	How many goals scored in 2 minute increments
SOG_per_2_min	How many shots on goal were taken in a 2 minute increments
hits_per_2_min	Average hits recorded for 2 minutes
Conference	Conference the team plays in (east vs west)
goal_differential	Power play goals scored minus short-handed goals allowed
Icetime	Total time spent on the power play (in minutes)

Questions

1. Describe the distribution of goals-per-2min. Does any team appear to have unusually high or low values for this variable?

2. Create plot to look at the relationship between goals_per_2min and SOG_per_2min. Does it look like more shots tend to lead to more goals?

3. Create plot to look at the relationship between goals_per_2min and hits_per_2min. Does it look like more hits tend to lead to more goals?

4. Create a plot to compare the distribution of goal scoring rates while on the power play between the two conferences. Does there appear to be much difference between the two conferences?

References

The data were obtained from the MoneyPuck website.