2021-22 PHF Season Projections
As another October rolls around so too does another opportunity to plug a bunch of number into a computer and hope for the best. I will be the first to admit there is not a lot of change model wise from last year, so if you’re here looking for more information about how Florence works, may i direct you to either last seasons post, or my World Championship Projections over at The Athletic.
The basics, however, this season as follows:
Offensive and Defensive ratings are produced based on how much stronger or weaker a team is perceived to be based on Game Score ratings calculated using Mike Murphy’s Whockey Formula. With higher offensive ratings and lower defensive ratings being better.
Matchups are charted using a Poisson distribution model to predict the likelihood of four separate game outcomes (W, L, OTW, OTL) and those numbers are stored to be referred back to later.
A Monte Carlo Simulations is then run to predict the outcome of the Regular Season and the Playoffs with all results being stored and the completion of each full season simulation
We then let the computer go brrr 50,000 times which with a help of a custom built PC during the off season now now takes considerably less time than it has previously.
At the completion of this we have a a % chance of ever available outcome from the almost unthinkable like Boston loosing every game and Connecticut winning it the cup in OT, to the slightly more likely (A Boston vs Toronto Final that is sure to tear a continent apart).
I will be trying to run an update to the model every week with new results coming out in the morning ET time so I recommend following me on Twitter if that’s your jam.
And now, with my sincerest apologies to everyone’s teams, here is Florence’s 2021-22 NWHL Projections.
Just looking at the basic projection summaries we can already see a couple of things, for one whale fans, this might spell the end of your suffering with Connecticut sitting at an 86% chance of making the Semi-Finals. The Boston Pride also a sure bet to make the semis with a 40% chance of becoming the first PHF team to go back to back. Minnesota and Toronto round out the top four while the Riveters and the Beauts look to have a rough year ahead of them sitting a decent distance back from the top pack with both teams having less than a 1% chance of winning the cup.
The Point distribution curves drive the idea of the a gap existing between the top four teams and the remainder even more with Metropolitan and the Beauts curve clearly sitting below those of the other teams in the leagues. However this also highlights the closeness of those teams teams with any of them easily about to leapfrog the other in the projections after just one or two good weekends.
As is now tradition I must remind you the end of the day the most correct piece of analysis is still the following and no I don’t hate your favourite team:
‘Just win baby’ - Al Davis (1963)
Also, if you want to know more about Florence, PHF Analytics, and Women’s Hockey in General may I suggest dropping by my twitch, most of this was coded live on stream and there will be more great stuff as the season progresses.