Oilers Defence in HERO Charts

Below are the HERO (Horizontal Evaluative Rankings Optic) charts for the Oilers defencemen. These charts have been created and maintained by Domenic Galamini and serve as a fantastic visualization tool. He’s clearly put some thought into what metrics are used and how the data is laid out for forwards and defencemen.

As with any analytics, these charts do not serve as an end-point for discussion and really should be used as a starting point for further analysis. Please note, the charts include the past three seasons (2012/13, 2013/14, 2014/15).

I found that the charts were pretty accurate in labeling the Oilers defencemen as first, second or third pairing. Obviously there’s other factors to consider, but I think the metrics give some good insight into the players.

One note from the Own the Puck:

What does vTO mean? It stands for “versus Teammates and Opposition”. For example, GF60 vTO is calculated as follows… ( GF60 – Teammate GF60 ) + ( League Avg GF60 – Opposition GA60 ). All stats used in the calculation of vTO metrics are adjusted for zone starts by nixing play that occurs within 10 seconds of off and def zone faceoffs.

Andrew Ference