2023-24 NHL Elo Ratings & Projections

Version History

v3.0 - current

Re-ran backtesting of model parameters with a bias towards the salary-cap era. This resulted in changes to several parameters, including increasing the K-factor from 6 to 8 and reducing home ice advantage from 50 to 42, which were found to improve predictive performance of the model at the game level. This in should improve the quality of the forecast, which is done via game-level monte carlo simulation.

v2.0

I added a Vegas totals bias to the teams' season starting elo. This differs from v1.0, which uses only last season's ending elo, with a small regression back to the mean. In this change, I mapped Vegas totals to elo ratings using a simple linear regression model, then I blended the v1 rating with the Vegas projected rating, at 65% Vegas-biased elo and 35% v1 elo. The most notable change is Boston going from first with a 20% cup chance, down to 4th at only 9%.

v1.0 - FiveThirtyEight's

This was an exact replica of FiveThirtyEight's NHL forecast.

What is this?

This is an elo forecast inspired by FiveThirtyEight's deprecated NHL Elo model and forecast. You can read about how the original version works on FiveThirtyEight's website. Model credit to @ryanabest and @neil_paine, with modifications as detailed in the version history above. This website is not affiliated with FiveThirtyEight or ABC News.

Why do it?

I'm a super fan of both hockey and elo ratings. So when I learned that FiveThirtyEight wasn't doing their forecasts this season, I shed a few tears. Ironically, a hockey injury gave me some extra time back in my week, which I used to build this.

Who made this?

I'm a software engineer, machine learning practioner and beer league hockey player. My day job is building software for Coastline, a driving education startup.