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Killing Time 2016: The More Casual Presentation of the Devils PK Zone Exits

At RITHAC, I presented the results from tracking all New Jersey Devils attempted zone exits on penalty kills for the last two seasons. This is a more relaxed and detailed version of the same presentation.

Washington Capitals v New Jersey Devils
Andy Greene was the Devils’ leader on defense for the penalty kill for two seasons running. Did he do better in 2015-16 than 2014-15? (Spoiler: Yes, he did.)
Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

Today, I present Killing Time 2016 at the RIT Hockey Analytics Conference. My assigned time is at 9:45 AM and I will be going rather quickly through my presentation. Information about the conference is at this RIT site. Some background is in order:

Last summer, I decided to track every single penalty kill and record every attempted zone exit by the New Jersey Devils. I called the larger project Killing Time as one of the main objectives was to identify how much time the New Jersey Devils took off the clock on their penalty kill with their icings, clearances, and other exits. In effect, I counted how much they actually killed within their shorthanded situations. The final summary of 2014-15’s data is in this post and it links to the other posts written from that tracking effort.

I repeated the same methodology for the 2015-16 season this summer. Instead of writing thousands and thousands of words about it across multiple posts, I sought to present it at a high-level. RITHAC was being run again and at a time where I could attend it; so it was a perfect match. I really got to tracking once my abstract for RITHAC was accepted. Given the limited time at the conference, I will be going very quickly through my slide deck. As a lot of work and a lot could be discussed from the findings, I’ve decided to make a video with more relaxed, casual commentary for the same set of slides.

So this is the one you should watch if you want to see the same slides presented at RITHAC but with more commentary and more time spent on each one. This was recorded on Thursday, September 8, with commentary just off the top of my head. No rehearsal, no edits, and nothing special. Just the same slides with more to discuss. Here it is. As with the Eastside Hockey Manager videos, you’ll likely want to maximize the video and watch it in HD for the best experience. Or at least as good as my off-the-cuff commentary can be.

I hope I did a good enough job at RITHAC, fast as it may be (or have been, depending on when you read this). I’d like to thank Ryan Stimson and the other organizers of the event for having me at the event. Thank you to anyone who watches the video. Let me know what you’d like to know from the presentation and this year’s iteration of Killing Time in the comments as well as what you think.