Thanks to some wonderful work by Ryan Stimson over at In Lou We Trust, we can begin to assess the passing ability of NHL players and their contributions to zone entries and scoring chances. Ryan and his team watched a number of games to collect the data (manually, I should add) and are now publishing the data for public use. A lot of thought was put into why this tracking was important and the methodology to collect the data.

A fantastic visualization tool has been developed by Spencer Mann, who has applied a few metrics to convert the passing data into some useful information. You can access his charts, along with a useful glossary, on his Tableau page.

Full article is at The Copper & Blue.