Why do this?
That’s the first question I had before I even started tracking anything way back in October of 2013. What could I hope to learn from tracking passing plays? It started around the idea that as so much of hockey is random, passing represents a skillful play to link between players and generate shot attempts. By isolating that aspect of the game, you’re essentially isolating skilled, intentional plays made by the players. The other thing was a quote from Gavin Fleig in Soccernomics: "Teams that complete a higher number of passes in the final third consistently finish in the top four of the league.