Checking in on Sweden’s most entertaining league

Checking in on Sweden's most entertaining league The beginning of a beautiful friendship? DANIEL W 14 NOV. 2023 Looking at the HA standings, the team that sticks out to me the most is Södertälje. Not just because their goal differential should have them situated quite a bit higher up the standings, but also because their 5v5 play so far this season would lead you to believe you’re watching a much more successful team: It’s not even that you can blame their goaltending or anything, they’re solidly outscoring their opponents during 5v5 play. Crossing the 60% mark on shot, xG and goal share puts them squarely into the elite territory at 5v5. 4 of their line combos (covering various iterations of their Top 9) are among the top 10 performing lines in HockeyAllsvenskan by adj. xGF%: Similarly three defence pairing versions they’ve iced are among the top ten D pairings in the league: Obviously 5v5 play isn’t everything but if you manage to be an elite team at 5v5, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be a good team unless you blow it in all other areas. In the long run, performing as they have, they should expect to convert their territorial advantage into a much more comfortable position in the standings. If I were an SSK supporter, I wouldn’t worry too much at this point yet. But since you’re already here and getting just three tables with some Corsi and xG values is pretty disappointing, let’s take a look at some PP units as well. PP Units If we check out the league’s most used 5v4 PP Units and add in SSK’s lines (I added Djurgården for fun, don’t worry about it), we can see that it’s not even that their chance creation on the PP has been horrible: Their most used unit has actually produced shots and chances at a reasonable rate1: They just haven’t quite been converting on the chances they’ve pulled. Now, obviously you’d expect a little more than just an ok-ish powerplay giving the personnel they can ice, but there is data to suggest that they should be doing a little better than they have so far. I had planned to maybe say a bit more about this, but since Viktor Jansson wrote something about exactly this topic today, you should probably just stop here and read that first, since he’s actually watched a whole bunch of SSK games this year and has more interesting things to say. Instead I’ll focus on the thing I do well and just produce some bonus charts to get this thing kicked off, here’s the most used PP unit for each HA team this season: Most used PP Units Teams A-K Most used PP Units Teams M-V This post was intended as a little info dump and as a kick off for more things to come. Hopefully I can make this a semi-regular thing and dig deeper into a few topics relating to HA this season2. If you have any topic suggestions (“WTF is going on with Djurgården?!” is already on the list, fyi) or other interesting analytics-y things to say, let me know via email (5plusspieldauer at gmail), on twitter or on twitter’s cousin without the porn bots and crypto scams. 1 These graphics show the most used pass types by each player on the PP as well as the pass types other players most frequently play to him as well as the shots he has set up (via primary assist) and his own shots. I like to think they quickly provide an overview of the construction of a powerplay. 2 Breakouts, forechecks, bad jokes, passing metrics, failed canucks prospects, we’re gonna have everything!2023-11-15 19:00 IF Björklöven - Djurgårdens IF Winpos Arena 2023-11-15 19:00 Brynäs IF - Tingsryds AIF Monitor ERP Arena 2023-11-15 19:00 Östersunds IK - Nybro Vikings IF Östersund Arena Hall A 2023-11-15 19:00 BIK Karlskoga - Mora IK Nobelhallen 2023-11-15 19:00 Västerås IK - Kalmar HC ABB Arena Nord 2023-11-15 19:00 Södertälje SK - Västerviks IK Scaniarinken