DATE: Wed, Sept 11, 2013
TIME: 11:45 am
PLACE: Council Room (SITE 5-084)
TITLE: Use of Performance Metrics to Forecast Success in the National Hockey League
PRESENTER: Josh Weissbock
University of Ottawa
ABSTRACT:

Predicting success in hockey is an important area of research which has received little attention in the sports data mining community. We are the first to propose a machine learning approach to forecast success in the National Hockey League. Our approach combines traditional statistics, such as goals for and against, and performance metrics such as possession and luck, in order to build a classification model. We construct several classification models with novel features such as possession and luck in order to build a classification model. Our results indicate that Neural Networks construct the most robust classification models. This confirms the work of earlier researchers, who have also employed Neural Networks in other sports data mining domains. Our results also show the statistics of PDO (which shows, in the short term, the teams playing better or worse than the expected variance) does not aid the prediction. We will also discuss random chance in the standings, playoff series predictions instead of a single game prediction, and the use of Natural Language Processing technique to predict based on written commentaries about the teams.