The HogCam!

We have a ton of game pictures for our team, but one thing I always thought would be cool is to have game videos so that we can go back and look at some of our finer and not-so-finer moments from our games.  Instead of just telling people stories of the plays we made or the goals we scored, it would be nice to have videos to show friends and family who are not able to come to our games.

I recently bought a small handheld HD video camera called the Flip Mino HD. It’s about the size of a cell phone, records 4 GB of HD-quality video and plugs directly into a computer via USB. It records 60 minutes of HD video on a 2.5 hour battery.

We’ve taken two game videos so far. The small size of the camera makes it easy to carry around and use. Since ice rink lighting is challenging (due to fluorescent lights), the video comes out a little dark, but I think it’s pretty decent:

Many thanks to Heikila22 who recorded these games from our bench.

The only issue I’ve had is that after I download the video to my computer, I have to collapse the 45+ minute recording into a 10 minute highlight reel to upload on to YouTube. This takes is a bit of time consuming work and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sustain doing that every week. I will do it as often as I can though because it’s fun to watch (at least for me) and anything that I can do to improve the hockey experience for my teammates, I want to do.

I might be one of the few who likes the videos though. The reality shock of watching ourselves on video was a little overwhelming for some of our players. One teammate wanted me to destroy the camera, and another player threatened to quit the team.

On the next movie, I’ll put up a warning.

Singh10.

Some milestones

I am trying to be good.  I really am. 

It has come to my attention that behind my back, my name is being attached to silly accusations, and I have a strong temptation to address these things.  However, since I’ve resolved to stop the smack talk for the sake of peace in the Silver B galaxy, I will continue to bite my tongue even if it makes for less entertaining stuff to write about.  Besides, certain people are free to bring up their little accusations with me on Friday.  

So, onwards and upwards.  Let’s talk about some milestones that I’ve crossed over the past couple of weeks.

First, our game against the Ice Dawgs a couple of weeks ago was my 100th as a Puck Hog.  There’s nothing particularly significant about 100 games per se, other than that it’s a traditional milestone.  But, it’s still a good feeling to know I’ve played that many games for this great group of guys.  It’s a ton of fun every week, and not just because of the hockey.  All the postgame hanging out  we do into the wee hours of the morning at our pizza place or another local restaurant makes it totally worth it, win or lose.  We’ll talk or joke around about a gamut of topics - be it about the game we just played or mixed martial arts matchups within our own team.  It’s always a lot of fun and is the best way to kick off the weekend.

To date, I’ve played 103 out of 107 games for our team.  My “career” hockey stats look like this:

Singh10 Career Stats

My points per game went up a bit with the Hogs compared to when I played on the original Foothill Flyers, but I’ve been pretty consistent.  I’d like to think I’ve improved over the 100 games, but that might be a tough call.  The fact that my stats still show a little growth in light of facing more able players in our current league suggests that there was some improvement.  But hey, I’m still working on it.

Excluding some notable exceptions, at the time when Silver B was created, like most teams we Puck Hogs moved our whole team up to a higher league (the league we’re in now – Silver B).  We’ve had to face much tougher competition since then, which I’m glad we do.  Several of the original Silver B teams still retain much of their character from their Bronze League days, including the Misfits (formerly the Phantiaks, formerly the Phantoms/Kodiaks), Ice Dawgs, SMB (formerly Yo MaMa, formerly the Volcanoes) and our team, and I think there is something very positive to be said for that.

Another milestone that just passed was the second anniversary of the Hog Blog on July 5.  On the first anniversary last year, I did a quick summary, so I’ll do that again this time around.  In year two, the Hog Blog has seen:

• Visits: 11,085
• Posts: 54
• Comments: 134
• Busiest day: September 30, 2008
• Most visited post: “Holey the Goalie and Nogoalov” – 256 views
• Most visited page: “The Hog Blog” – 567 views
• Top five search engine terms: “hog blog hockey”, “bryan klein”, “puck hogs”, “puck hog blog”, “puck hogs roseville”.

I posted much more regularly last year, so I clearly need to pick up the pace.  Silver B, you have been warned.

On to year three!

Singh10.

Let your math speak

The Puck Hogs’ resident mathematician did a quick statistical analysis based on regular season stats so far this season.  Basically, he compared the average goals scored per player on each team in Silver B in the regular season.

Try and keep up with his analysis here…

If you take the number of players that have scored goals on each team and divided it by the total number of goals scored by that team, you come up with the following data.  Keep in mind, the closer that this number is to 1.0 for a team, the more spread out the scoring is:

These teams have 2 or fewer goals,  and can be considered outliers, so we’ll exclude them from this analysis -  

Pirates 1.0
SMB 1.0
Spitfires 1.0
Roughriders (0 goals)

Now it gets interesting -

Misfits 0.750
Pints 0.714
NorCal A 0.667
Puck Hogs 0.636
Flying Wizards  0.400
Ice Dawgs 0.385

Now let’s assume, each team has one dominant offensive contributor and take out that player’s stats from each team.  Two weeks in, it looks like this -

Misfits 1.0
NorCal A 1.0
Pints 0.8
Puck Hogs 0.75
Ice Dawgs 0.67
Flying Wizards 0.45
 
Taking out the Ice Dawgs’ top scorer dramatically increases their average goals per player.  In other words, this one player scores a lot of goals for that team, but the average goes up because other people still contribute. 

At the bottom of the list is the Flying Wizards, who despite all of their scoring this season (they’ve scored 15 goals in two games) still have the lowest goals per player.  They go from near bottom to bottom of the list when you take out the top scorer from each team.  

What does this indicate?  There are only a select few players on that team who score and when you look at the scoresheets, you’ll see that only five out of 14 players on their team have ever scored a goal this season.   Clearly, considering how much they’ve outscored their opponents thus far, the Flying Wizards offense is based on a select few very talented individuals (let’s call them, I don’t know, “ringers”) who have no trouble getting lots of goals in Silver B while the bulk of that team – the non-scoring passengers - reap the rewards while contributing less than any other team in the league.

Singh10.

Parity? Draw your own conclusions.

I did a quick calculation of average goals scored per game for each team in Silver B, from preseason through first round of the playoffs:

Winter 2008-2009, Preseason through Round 1 of the Playoffs

This is based on Skatetown’s stats. If you rank by goals scored, it closely matches how the teams finished in the regular season, except that Norcal Crossover A, who actually finished above the Misfits, scored fewer goals per game on average. 

Also, from Yo MaMa up to Puck Hogs, the increase in goals scored per game happens in increments of about half a goal as you move up.  The increase widens for the Flying Wizards and Pints.  The average scored across the league (the gray dotted line in the chart) is 3.3 goals per game.

Singh10.