Paddy Moran - A Mediocre Hall of Famer?

Patrick 'Paddy' Moran is one of the more interesting goaltenders in the Hall of Fame. He played senior-level hockey from 1901/02 to 1916/17, playing for Quebec with the exception of the 1909/10 season, when that club did not operate for a full season. Although inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958, a cursory look at Moran's career numbers raises more questions than it answers. His won-lost-tied record is 99-107-2, and in 16 seasons he led his league in goals-against average only once. Now, he played in leagues of between only four and six teams throughout his career, which makes a below-average winning percentage more understandable, but which also makes his GAA record less impressive, since he has fewer teams to beat.

But we can look at his career in more detail. From 1910/11 to 1915/16, Moran (or more properly Moran's team) had the best goals-against average in the league only once. However, it's probably worth noting that the starting goaltender of nearly every team he finished behind is also a Hall-of-Famer, and that he finished ahead of several Hall-of-Famer seasons as well. Being in the middle of the pack amongst Hall-of-Famers is hardly a point against you.

Here are the GAA leaders, in order, for each of these seasons, finishing with the lowest-ranked Hall-of-Famer that season. Non-Hall-of-Famers are in brackets.

1910/11: Georges Vezina, Percy LeSueur, Riley Hern, Paddy Moran
1911/12: Georges Vezina, Paddy Moran, Percy LeSueur
1912/13: Paddy Moran, Georges Vezina, [Art Boyce], Percy LeSueur, Hap Holmes
1913/14: Georges Vezina, Hap Holmes, Percy LeSueur, Paddy Moran
1914/15: Clint Benedict, [Charlie McCarthy], Georges Vezina, Paddy Moran, Hap Holmes, Percy LeSueur
1915/16: Clint Benedict, Georges Vezina, Paddy Moran, Percy LeSueur

Of the 12 team-seasons that were ahead of Moran, 11 were recorded by Hall-of-Famers. And Moran finished ahead of seven other Hall-of-Famer seasons as well.

If this was the case throughout his career, there would be no mystery to Moran's reputation. However, earlier in his lengthy career, the same analysis shows much different results:

1901/02: [Bill Nicholson], Bouse Hutton, [Archie Lockerby], Paddy Moran
1902/03: [Bill Nicholson], Bouse Hutton, [Jim Nichol], [Patrick O'Reilly], Paddy Moran
1903/04: Bouse Hutton, Paddy Moran
1904/05: [Nathan Frye], [Oliver Waugh], Paddy Moran
1905/06: [Henri Menard], [Billy Hague], [Fred Brophy], [Nathan Frye], Paddy Moran
1906/07: Riley Hern, Percy LeSueur, [Nathan Frye], [George White], Paddy Moran
1907/08: [Bill Nicholson], Percy LeSueur, Riley Hern, Paddy Moran

These results don't make Moran's case seem very strong. He was behind all kinds of other netminders, only one of which (Big Bill Nicholson) has anything close to resembling a Hall-of-Fame career. But the fact is, if Moran was really that bad, he wouldn't have lasted at this level long enough to record the more impressive results he did in his later seasons. Moran played for some bad teams, especially early in his career. And even when he had a good team in front of him, it tended to be a team focused on defence rather than offence, so he was often the last line of defence when his skaters had abandoned him in an effort to fill the other net. It is easy to overstate this effect, though. For his Quebec career his team had a tendency towards offence, but not a huge one. Here are Quebec's Marginal Goals score (MG), Marginal Goals Saved (MGS) and the percentage that MG is of the total (MG%):

Season	MG	MGS	MG%
1901	5.4	4.9	.524
1902	10.9	11.3	.491
1903	13.4	5.2	.720
1904	28.8	26.8	.518
1905	47.2	39.6	.544
1906	25.5	24.5	.510
1907	24.3	25.3	.490
1908	47.6	26.2	.645
1909	36.6	18.2	.668
1911	23.1	28.9	.444
1912	38.3	49.1	.438
1913	68.7	55.1	.555
1914	68.0	56.0	.548
1915	42.0	44.2	.487
1916	43.9	43.3	.503
Average			.539

However, one could certainly argue that if Moran was a lesser netminder, this percentage would be even higher than it is. Perhaps they only saved as many goals as they did because of their spectacular goalie.

So to a certain extent, it appears that the responsibility for Quebec goal prevention was left to Moran, while his mates went forward in search of goals. On top of that was Moran's unique style, which we'll discuss in the next post when we give Moran a proper profile. We've already seen that Moran likely deserves his spot in the Hall of Fame, which means the Point Allocation system can reasonably be bent to agree with the his reputation. As such we have no reason to refute the opinion that he was a great goalie. Next time, we'll see just how good the system thinks he is.

Point Allocation on Offence

Previously we've talked about Marginal Goals, which form the basis of the historical Point Allocation system. We use Marginal Goals not only to establish a team's quality, but also to allocate this quality (in the form of points) between offence and defence. From there you merely have to allocate these offensive and defensive points to each player on the team, in a rational way, to estimate the value that each of said players contributed to the team achieving what it did.

I should say, at the outset, that Point Allocation will never by anything more than a rough estimate of a player's value, especially the further back you go in history. The surprises it uncovers will be few; those considered the best players of the day will largely be shown by the system to be great players. It's really more about trying to establish an equal footing to allow players from different eras to be compared to each other, and also to identify the value of the non-great players from any era. There are hundreds of players from history that were really good, solid players, with the level of talent that would allow a nice, long NHL career in today's world, but who are relatively unknown today because they were not among the very best players of their day. Part of the purpose of the system is to figure out approximately how good these players were.

Going back to the system, we can look at allocating offensive points, which is easier and more straight-forward than dealing with defence. Point Allocation gives offensive points to players based on their scoring point totals, as a proportion of the team's total scoring points. We don't worry about adjusting for the relative rate of assists per goal; rather we assume that the officials of the day basically knew the relative contributions of playmakers and goals-scorers at the time. There were many fewer assists awarded per goal in the pre-forward pass era, for example, and individual rushing was a more important factor in scoring goals at that time, so we figure that's alright.

We can have a look at the 1907 Montreal Wanderers again, one of the greatest teams of all time, to examine some of the details.

Player	Pos	GP	G	A	Pts	PIM	MIN
Russell, Ernie	C	9	43	4	47	26	514
Johnson, Moose	LW	10	15	5	20	42	558
Blachford, Cecil	RW	7	14	3	17	5	415
Glass, Pud	R	10	13	4	17	21	579
Patrick, Lester	P/R	9	11	3	14	21	532
Marshall, Jack	RW	3	6	0	6	0	180
Stuart, Hod	CP	8	3	2	5	20	460
Kennedy, Rod	P	3	0	1	1	2	178
Totals		10	105	22	127	124	610

Wow - this team had five Hall-of-Famers among its eight skaters (Russell, Johnson, Patrick, Marshall and Stuart), and another tending goal in Riley Hern. It was truly an all-star team that played together throughout the season.

(As an aside, you might realize that the assist totals above are completely unofficial. I compiled them by reading the game reports for all of the ECAHA games that season. I'll have a brief discussion of compiling assists like this in the next post.)

Based on the above, Ernie Russell, one of history's best pure scorers, would receive 47 out of 127 offensive points the Wanderers earned, or 37%. But it's not quite that simple. Some players produce points at such a low rate, compared to their positional norms, that they effectively costs their team goals. Remember that Point Allocation is built upon the concept of Marginal Goals, which has at its core the idea that there is a certain minimum level of performance that anyone good enough to get a sniff in a particular league will be able to contribute. This applies to individual offensive performance as well as at the team level.

For the Wanderers, this applies to only one player. Pud Glass was a hard-working, professional player and a very good defender. But in 1907 his offensive production left much to be desired, given that he played rover, which as a position scored just as much as centres league-wide. Among all centres and rovers, he places ahead of only the men from the sad-sack Montreal Shamrocks on a per-minute basis:

Player	Pos	Team	GP	Pts	MIN	Pts/60 MIN
Russell, Ernie	C	Mtl W	9	47	514	5.49
Bowie, Russell	R	Mtl V	10	47	587	4.80
Smith, Harry	C	Ott	9	25	484	3.10
Hale, Chandler	C	Mtl V	7	21	412	3.06
Jordan, Herb	C	Que	5	15	300	3.00
Sargent, Grover	C	Mtl A	9	22	538	2.45
Constantin, Charles	R	Que	7	16	409	2.35
Westwick, Rat	R	Ott	9	18	528	2.05
Smaill, Walter	R	Mtl A	10	18	578	1.87
Glass, Pud	R	Mtl W	10	17	579	1.76
Brennan, Johnny	R	Mtl S	5	7	285	1.47
McCarthy, Frank	C	Mtl S	5	4	225	1.07

The system figures if Glass can't outscore Charles Constantin, who played precisely one season of senior hockey, his offence should be knocked down a peg when deciding who contributed how much to his team's goal-scoring. So he's given 10.7 scoring points instead of 17 when allocating the team's offence. Rather than just adjust everyone's point totals to remove this "sub-marginal" level of offense, we just apply an adjustment to those below that level. Why this way and not the other? No particular reason. The effect is the same.

And don't worry. We know that Glass has a reputation for good defence, and he will earn his share of points that way, when we look at allocating defence. In fact, the system considers him the team's most valuable defensive forward. But more on that later.

Modifying Marginal Goals

Last time, we looked at Marginal Goals analysis and how it can be applied to historical hockey stats as the first step toward using the Point Allocation system. We ended by looking at the relationship that Marginal Goals assumes between goal differential and wins, which is strictly linear:

This, of course, is not completely realistic. While the actual relationship between goals and wins is very similar to this along most of the normal range of team performance, it definitely gets squidgy at the extremes. Very good teams, such as the 1907 Montreal Wanderers, and very bad teams, such as the 1907 Montreal Shamrocks, will be significantly mis-estimated by Marginal Goals. Pythagorean Analysis does a much better job at reflecting the actual relationship between goals and wins at these extremes, which looks something like this:

You can see here the excellent Wanderers being overestimated by Marginal Goals, and the pathetic Shamrocks being underestimated. This is what happens with very good and very bad teams under Marginal Goals analysis.

There's a simple solution to this problem, of course. In developing the historical Point Allocation system, I haven't used this simple Marginal Goals analysis, but a modified version. The theory behind the modification is quite simple - after a certain point, each additional goal you score has less and less value. If you've already scored 10 goals in a game, scoring an eleventh isn't going to increase your chances of winning, since you've already essentially won. Similarly, if you've already allowed 10 goals, the eleventh can't make you lose the game any more than you already are.

So, instead of the basic Marginal Goals calculation discussed last time, we put some limits on it. Every goal scored in excess of 1.33 times the league average counts for only one-quarter of a goal, and every goal against in excess of 1.33 times the league average counts for only one-quarter of a goal against. This distorts the upper and lower ends of possible team performance in order to make Marginal Goals analysis better match the actual relationship between goals and wins.

Going back to our 1907 results:

Team	W-L	GF	GA
Montreal Wanderers	10-0	105	42
Ottawa Senators	7-3	76	54
Montreal Victorias	6-4	101	70
Montreal Winged Wheelers	3-7	58	83
Quebec Bulldogs	2-8	62	88
Montreal Shamrocks	2-8	52	117

We already know that basic Marginal Goals analysis results in the following, where MGF is the team's Marginal Goals For, MGS is the team's Marginal Goals Saved, and MG% is the resulting winning percentage:

Team	MGF	MGS	MG%
Montreal Wanderers	66.8	72.8	.913
Ottawa Senators	38.3	59.3	.645
Montreal Victorias	62.8	44.8	.704
Montreal Winged Wheelers	20.4	29.8	.334
Quebec Bulldogs	24.3	25.3	.329
Montreal Shamrocks	14.4	-4.2	.068

Modified Marginal Goals, on the other hand, produces this:

Team	MGF	MGS	MG%
Montreal Wanderers	64.3	72.8	.897
Ottawa Senators	38.3	59.3	.645
Montreal Victorias	62.8	44.8	.704
Montreal Winged Wheelers	20.4	29.8	.334
Quebec Bulldogs	24.3	25.3	.329
Montreal Shamrocks	14.4	8.5	.152

Notice how much closer the Shamrocks are now to their actual result of two wins for the season. Graphically, the results look like this:

The little kinks in the line at the extreme allow the linear "curve" to match the Pythagorean relationship much closer than basic Marginal Goals analysis. We're now able to use Marginal Goals, with all their advantages, without being fooled by extreme teams.

Marginal Goals in History

One of the projects I've been working on for some time now is an application of my old Point Allocation system to hockey leagues throughout history. Point Allocation, developed in 2002, was the first published attempt at a comprehensive player valuation system, so far as I can tell. It's similar in purpose to Tom Awad's Goals Versus Threshold system used at Hockey Prospectus, in that it attempts to place a value on each player's contributions on both offence and defence in a single measure, to see who contributes the most to their team's success.

The basis of Point Allocation, then as now, is Marginal Goals analysis. This is an idea adapted from Bill James' work in his book Win Shares. Marginal Goals represent what a historically bad team is able to produce in competition; no team scores zero goals or allows an infinite number of them. Marginal Goals are therefore what you can accomplish without really trying to ice a good team. Historically, Marginal Goals on offence are equal to about 0.5 of the league average, and Marginal Goals of defence are 1.5 of the league average.

Any goals a team scores in excess of 0.5 times the league average therefore contributes to winning games, and any goals a team saves below 1.5 times the league average does the same. By adding these together, and dividing by twice the league average in goals scored, we get quite an accurate reflection of a team's winning percentage. As an example, let's look at the 1907 Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association (ECAHA) season:

Team	W-L	GF	GA
Montreal Wanderers	10-0	105	42
Ottawa Senators	7-3	76	54
Montreal Victorias	6-4	101	70
Montreal Winged Wheelers	3-7	58	83
Quebec Bulldogs	2-8	62	88
Montreal Shamrocks	2-8	52	117

Using Marginal Goals analysis, we get the following results, where MGF is the team's Marginal Goals For, MGS is the team's Marginal Goals Saved, and MG% is the resulting winning percentage:

Team	MGF	MGS	MG%
Montreal Wanderers	66.8	72.8	.913
Ottawa Senators	38.3	59.3	.645
Montreal Victorias	62.8	44.8	.704
Montreal Winged Wheelers	20.4	29.8	.334
Quebec Bulldogs	24.3	25.3	.329
Montreal Shamrocks	14.4	-4.2	.068

Teams from this time in history will tend to have a wider variance between their actual winning percentage and their MG% than modern teams do, because of the low number of games they played. With only a 10-game season, there is less chance for the luck to even out. But even so, the MG% tracks the teams' actual wins very well, with only the lowly Montreal Shamrocks being off by more than a win. The Shamrocks, a historically terrible defensive team, were lucky to win the two matches that they did in 1907, one against each of the Winged Wheelers and Bulldogs, two other rather bad teams.

The great advantage of this systems, of course, as compared to the more conventional Pythagorean Analysis, is that Marginal Goals gives us a very easy way to not only quantify a team's success, but allocate said success between offence and defence. In 1907, for instance, the Montreal Victorias relied on offence for 58% of their success, while Ottawa was 61% defence. This is the first step in allocating points to individual players, which is the purpose of Point Allocation.

Graphically, the relationship that Marginal Goals Analysis assumes between goal differential and winning looks like this:

As goal differential increases, winning percentage increases in a linear fashion. Now, you may be aware that this relationship isn't entirely realistic. Next time, I'll address that.