Quality of Competition has been a divisive topic for a while now. We’ve heard some of the sharpest minds in the game argue that it’s extremely important, with others in the analytics community claim it doesn’t matter much. My goal today is to help bridge that gap.



Regardless of which team you cheer for, we’ve all seen countless examples of players who thrive in sheltered minutes (ie. Travis Dermott), along with those who struggle with more difficult usage (ie. Ron Hainsey). Intuitively, we know that a players’ opponents are going to impact their on-ice results. The million dollar question is: just how important is Quality of Competition?



One of my favourite answers to this question is : Very. Also not much. It’s all relative. This came from a research piece two years ago by Ryan Stimson and Dawson Spriggins (better know by the pseudonym DTMAboutHeart). The results of the study indicated that a defenceman’s on-ice numbers were...