Last year, there was a hockey analytics conference at the Rochester Institute of Technology hosted by Ryan Stimson, who was writing on this site, and Matthew Hoffman. It went so well that there will be another one. Hoffman and Stimson have organized Thomas Gosnell Hall at the RIT campus to host another one-day event focused on how the great game of hockey is analyzed. It’s no secret that I’m a proponent of statistical analysis in hockey. Conferences like this do not just interest me, but they inform what I think and write about the game. Therefore, I’m interested in the 2016 edition of the RITHAC, which will take place on September 10, 2016.
I have to be. Because I will be in it.
Yes, I’m not just going to be one of the attendees of the event. I will be actually presenting at the event. What’s more is that those of you who have been reading the site since at least last summer, will already know a bit about what it is I will be presenting. It’s a continuation of Killing Time, the series of posts from last summer that looked at every single zone exit by the Devils when they were on the penalty kill. I’ve been tracking the same information for this past season and will present the conclusions from two season’s worth of data. I will be speaking for fifteen minutes at 9:45 AM local time about it and it will definitely be New Jersey Devils-heavy. As my work should be. It will also definitely be a summary as opposed to the long, drawn-out posts I usually write. If nothing else, please check it out to see if I can be brief for a change.
The registration page – with a full schedule of presentations - has been up in the RIT College of Science page. Attendance slots are limited to 200 and I believe that over half have been claimed. So do not hesitate to register today and please only register if you’re serious about heading up to Rochester, NY for the event. If you can’t make it up there, don’t want to drive up there, or registration is closed, then you can still follow the event from afar. Ryan has confirmed to me that there will be a live stream of the presentations as well as recorded videos. Therefore, there are options to check out what happened and you can learn from afar at your own convenience.
I’m excited to be there and represent this site and the larger network at RITHAC. Ryan or someone else can correct me, but I think I’m the first one from SBN that manages a whole site that is presenting at one of these events. I’m definitely the only one with a SBN site listed on the schedule. I thought that was worth noting. In any case, I hope you do decide to go to RITHAC and/or watch it online on that weekend. I hope to share what I’ve discovered with you all and maybe – just maybe – it’ll spur further interest in the analytics side of things among the only fans that matter in the world of hockey: the New Jersey Devils fans. I’d like to thank Ryan for having me in advance, and I’ll try not to let you all down at 9:45 AM on September 10, 2016.