We’re about a third of the way through the SDHL regular season, with all teams having played at least 12 of their 36 games. With games set to start up again after a 10-day break, I figured it be a great time to take a look at how the league is shaping up.
This is also an excuse for me to show off the latest viz style in my arsenal: score growth charts! You may recognize this same style for the NHL from the wonderful Micah from hockeyviz.com, so full props to him for originating it.
If you want to know more about how exactly to interpret my version, check out my viz reference at some point soon, but the TL;DR: each line/curve represents a single game, the labelled nodes it passes through from bottom to top represent how the score progressed during the game (excluding the shootout, or game-winning shots as the SDHL refers to them), with the team in question being the score on the left and their opponent being the score on the right. For example, if a line goes from 0-0 to 1-0 to 1-1 to 1-2 and then stops, that tells you the team played a game where the team scored a goal first (1-0) and then their opponent scored two (1-1 then 1-2). The color reflects the final result of the game, with the legend at the bottom of the viz.
Looking at the current standings from top-to-bottom:
1. Luleå HF (37 points)
Luleå HF is a rather poor way to show off the new viz style, if only because their domination of the SDHL so far makes everything quite lopsided and squished together. They’ve won all of their games so far bar one: a game against Djurgårdens IF that remained tied at 0-0 until the game-winning shots.
2. MoDo Hockey (28 points)
MoDo Hockey has a much more reasonable looking score growth, which I acknowledge is a little weird to say considering it features two different wins where they put up nine goals. Still, they well deserve their second-place slot: they’ve lost just three of their 13 games so far, oddly enough all of them games where their opponent scored three goals.
3. Brynäs IF (24 points)
Brynäs IF occupies the third place slot at the moment, and are notable for having faced the most overtimes so far this season, going to overtime in four of their 13 games so far. Their record in those overtimes is split down the middle: two wins and two losses. The latter includes a game against MoDo Hockey where Brynäs IF opened the game with a goal just 50 seconds in, followed by a short-handed goal less than six minutes later, only for MoDo Hockey to score two goals in the remaining 14 minutes of the period and the game to remain tied at 2-2 all the way through the game-winning shot.
4. Linköping HC (22 points)
Linköping HC has seen some of the most high-scoring yet relatively even games in the league so far, including a 4-5 loss and a 6-3 win that both saw the game tied at 3-3 at one point. They also share the dubious honor with Luleå HF and Leksands IF of having only gone to overtime once — and losing that game during game-winning shots.
5. Frölunda HC (21 points)
Frölunda HC test the idea that scoring first heavily indicates the final result. They won three and lost two of the games in which they scored first and won four and lost three of the games in which they were scored on first. The latter may be down to their excellent track record in overtime, of which two of the games in which they were scored on first ultimately ended up going to. They have won all three of their games that have went to overtime, one during overtime proper and two during game-winning shots.
6. Djurgårdens IF (19 points)
Djurgårdens IF has the most modest-scoring games in the league, on both sides: no game they’ve played in has seen more than six goals, whereas all other teams have played in a game with at least eight goals.
7. SDE HF (14 points)
SDE HF like an even playing ground, even after the game has already started: a whopping nine of the 13 games they’ve played have been tied 1-1 at some point.
8. HV 71 (14 points)
HV 71 is tied with SDE HF on points at 14, but has a game in hand, having only played 12 games so far to SDE HF’s 13 games. They also don’t appear to be a team that thrive on close finishes: whenever they’ve won, its always been by a margin of at least two goals over their opponents.
9. Leksands IF (13 points)
As opposed to Frölunda HC, a lot about the final score in Leksands IF’s games so far can be told from the first goal: they have yet to win a game where the opponent scores first, but have won four of the six games where they score first.
10. AIK (0 points)
Oh, AIK. Featuring another oddly squished viz, but due to an abundance of losses instead of wins, AIK has yet to earn a point this season, despite having played the most games of any team so far with 14.