Is Hoffman’s scoring slide a real, repeatable flaw? Mike Hoffman has been a better scorer in the first half of the season versus the second half of the season for two years in a row. The problem is we have no idea if that is a real, actual, and repeatable flaw in Hoffman’s game.

It’s been a rough few weeks for the Ottawa Senators, a team that’s ultimately starting to come to terms with the fact that they’re not going to be playing a game 83 this season.

With the playoff discussion starting to subside, attention has turned to the long-term outlook of the club, and expectations for the team as the off-season approaches.

Ottawa does possess one of the highest profile expiring contracts in the league in Mike Hoffman, a late-blooming winger who has scored at blistering paces for two consecutive years. Only a handful of players have been more productive goal scorers during that stretch, and we are talking about the highest cut of talent here – guys like Ovechkin, Tarasenko, Kane, and Seguin. Whether it’s in Ottawa or elsewhere, there’s plenty reason to believe Hoffman is headed for a mega payday.

What’s particularly curious about this situation is that the Senators don’t seem to be overly enthused with his play of late. Despite ridiculous scoring outputs, he’s been shuffled down the lineup on numerous occasions, and his ice time has been held to comically low levels.

TSN’s own Ian Mendes had an interesting piece on the Hoffman-Ottawa relationship that shed some light on this issue. There’s a lot of meat in there, but I found this quote by general manager Bryan Murray to be the biggest takeaway for a variety of reasons:

Earlier this week, Bryan Murray made it fairly clear the organization remains on the fence about committing to Hoffman and a long-term contract. Speaking to TSN 1200, the Senators general manager said, “We want to see Mike Hoffman play down the stretch. We want him to do what he did in the first half of the year. Before we make a real commitment we want to see performance at this time of year when the game is harder and tougher.”

Now, this certainly could be standard general manager bluster that makes its way to the media before major contract negotiations. After all, it’s pretty tough to find leverage in negotiations when the guy at the other side of the table has emerged as one of the league’s more productive forwards. To that end, it could just be Murray grasping at straws, trying to get out in front of a dialogue that could ultimately end with a very expensive contract on his payroll. I certainly don’t blame him if that’s the case.

That said, I think the point Murray raises really lacks substance. It’s true that Hoffman has been a better scorer in the first half of the season versus the second half of the season for two years in a row. The problem is we have no idea if that is a real, actual, and repeatable flaw in Hoffman’s game.

Think of this in the realm of something as simple as coin flipping. Let’s say I get to flip a coin four times with my target being tails. If I flip tails, tails, heads and heads, what’s your takeaway? Sure, I was 50 per cent successful. But did my coin-flipping talent deteriorate down the stretch? Of course not. We know that there’s no talent in coin flipping, and therefore it’s not something we should ultimately care about.

Let’s bring this back to hockey. The theory, again, is that Hoffman may struggle to sustain scoring as the season progresses. Obviously we can’t fact check this against Hoffman’s numbers historically – the data clearly shows he’s a better goal scorer in the first half of the season, and that performance dwindles as the season progresses.

But is this a real issue across the league, or is this more or less randomness clouding our analysis?

One way to look at this is to consider other players who have been in Hoffman’s exact situation. So, that’s exactly what I did. I pulled every regular forward who saw his goal scoring slip in the second half for two consecutive seasons, then looked at the subsequent season to see if the issue remained. If the Senators front office is right, this is a real problem for some players around the league, and we would again expect scoring to dwindle in the third year, just as it did in the first two.

The horizontal axis shows the player's scoring in the first half of the year. The vertical axis shows the player's scoring in the second half of the year. If we are correct, most of these players should experience steady decline and see their scoring averages plummet.

The problem is the data just doesn’t support this theory. Even in our group of forwards where we have legitimate reason to believe their play slips as the season progresses, the second-half goal-scoring numbers are all over the place. Some forwards produced at the exact same rate. Some forwards produced at a significantly better rate. Some forwards produced at a poorer rate. It’s why the trend line is extremely flat — there’s no observable relationship here.

Sometimes, the absence of an observable trend is an important finding in its own right. Remember, this group of players studied was carefully selected — we weeded out a significant number of important data points just to drill down on a select few and measure the results. And even then, nothing turned up.

The Takeaway

The concerns about Hoffman’s scoring rates diminishing as the season progresses seem poorly thought out. It seems much more likely that Hoffman’s flipped heads twice. I know this because plenty of other forwards have been in the exact same situation (with, very likely, the exact same concerns echoed at the time), and many of them have ended up just fine.