Shot Attempts vs Ice Time: What Coaches Know That SAT Rel60 Doesn’t

Hypothesis:  Coaches should allocate ice time based on SAT Rel 60. (shot attempts for a player relative to shot attempts for team when that player is not on the ice per 60 minutes). Or, coaches should give more ice time to players with high SAT Rel-60.
Data: Scraped from nhl.com. The statistics used are: SAT Rel60, Time On Ice Per Game Played (TOI), Position, and Goals.  Only players with 30 games played and at least 10 minutes of ice time are used in the analysis.
Analysis: The first step was to plot the data.  I split the data into forwards and defense because often defensemen are asked to play more than forwards.  The expected relationship holds for forwards, but is less prevalent in defenseman. Players with high SAT Rel% tend to get more ice time.

The black line is a linear regression fit line.  Generally, forwards with 0 SAT Rel60 should get around 15 minutes per game.  Players with plus10 SAT Rel60 should play about 17 minutes (or two2 minutes more per game).   The blue lines represent four minutes above or below the estimation.  Forwards above  he top blue line are getting played too much, while players below the bottom blue line are getting played too little.

This is where the analysis falls apart:

Below is a list of forwards who are playing four or more minutes than their SAT Rel60 suggests they should.  These names are easy to recognize and have scored tons of goals this season.  These 17 players average 22 goals (~78 games into the season).  The rest of the forwards in this analysis average 12.5 goals. These 17 players have an average SAT Rel60 of -0.32.  (MPG = Minutes Per Game).

Below is a list of players the SAT Rel60 predicts should be playing more minutes.  These names don’t pop out at you like the list above.  This group has an average of five goals (~78 games).  Their average SAT Rel60 is plus 3.34.

Conclusion: Clearly coaches are making the right choice by playing guys like Kane, JVR, and Getzlaf 20 minutes a game. The results of this analysis don’t pass the eye test. Maximizing SAT Rel60 doesn’t appear to be an optimal strategy when allocating ice time.  Check out hockeyprospectus.com for a look at Shea Weber’s RelativeCorsi stats.