Puck Possession App (2018)
Designer, Programmer
After getting comfortable with our tracking metrics, I became interested in another statistic that would complement icetime: Puck Possession.
But there wasn't an easy way to track this kind of information. You could run a series of timers on your desktop, but for 20 or so players, jumping between them all was really cumbersome.
Eventually, I took the 'depth charts' idea and applied it to a custom app we made for iPad and desktop.
Every player had their colorized icon, and was in their slotted lines. Tapping the player would start up a timer, and tapping another player, or tapping the same player, would stop that timer. We added an opposing team button and timer, and now we had a working way to track Puck Possession.
While the desktop versions do work, the best way to run this app is on iPad, where you can tap the icons and not struggle with a mouse. It's much easier when you're clicking these timers hundreds of times a game.
Now with the game over with, we would copy the player's possession times and generate pie charts and comparison tables for extra analysis.
It became obvious who was making plays and who was throwing pizzas, because their possession times were much higher. They were holding onto the puck, thinking, and waiting for a play to develop.
It's also interesting to compare possession times between your team and the opposing team, as well as a player's ice time in relation with the time they hold the puck.
Even for the best players, they would only have 1:30-2:00m of time actually holding the puck each game.
That's not a lot of time across 60 minutes of play. It really drives home to the player the importance of thinking out there, making good decisions, and maximizing the time you get where you're actually in control of the puck.