We've added four new measures to goalies on Hockey-Reference.com, Games Started, Quality Starts, Quality Start Percentage, Really Bad Starts. These should be available anywhere you see goalie stats on the site currently, including the Play Indexes.

Games Started (GS) should be fairly obvious, this is the number of games that a goalie started (i.e. did not come in for another pulled goalie).

Quality Starts and Quality Start Percentage were developed by Rob Vollman, and are described in his Hockey Abstract. Here is a brief description, but we encourage you to pick up a copy of his book for additional discussion of this statistic (and many others):

A Quality Start (QS) is when the goalie achieves at least the mean save percentage (for the season) in a game. For the 2013-2014 season that percentage is 91.5%. So, if Tuukka Rask allows only 2 goals on 28 shots (a 92.9% save percentage), that is considered a Quality Start. There is an additional criteria for low shooting games: if a goalie faces 20 or fewer shots, he only needs to get an 88.5% save percentage. The relationship between save percentage and winning percentage (and hence the definition of Quality Start) is shown here (prior to 2009-2010):

Quality Start Percentage (QS%) is simply the number of Quality Starts / Games Started. This gives you a sense of how often the goalie has a Quality Start. A good rule of thumb for this stat is that anything less than 50% is bad, anything over 60% is among the league leaders, and the league average for an NHL regular is about 53.4%. Also, according to Vollman: "Based on the average of every goalie with fewer than ten starts in a season, the average for replacement -level goalies is 42.8% but, in fairness, there is some selectino bias involved in this since playing that poorly will generally limit you to ten start in the first place."¹

Really Bad Starts (RBS) is another stat coined by Vollman that is "awarded" whenever a goalie has a save percentage in a game less than 85%. A team only has a 10% chance of winning when the goalie has save percentage that low.

Where to find these new stats

"So," you are asking, "where do I find these new stats?" They are available anywhere goalie stats have been listed on the site. Due to a limitation of our data source, they are only available going back to the 2007-08 season. So, if you go to a goalie page, you'll see the stats listed in the NHL Standard and NHL Playoffs sections.

Additionally, you can see the league-wide stats on the yearly page for a league. For instance, the 2015 stats are available here.

Finally, the stats are available on the Player Season Finder for goalies and the Player Playoff Finder for goalies.

As always, we welcome any feedback.

We just wanted to quickly note that we have added First Downs (for & against) as a search criteria in the Team Game Finder. Additionally, we have added breakdowns for First Downs by rushing, passing & penalties since 1999 (total First Downs are complete back to 1940). Here's a few examples of these new searches:

• Most First Downs in a game since 1940
• Most First Downs allowed via penalty in a season since 1999
• Most First Downs allowed in a 20+ point win since 1940
• Teams with at least as many turnovers as first downs since 1940
• NFL teams are a combined 76-10 since 1999 when gaining 15+ First Downs via rushes

These searches are just the tip of the iceberg here and we encourage users to dig in.

Users of our Play Index have likely grown accustomed to searching through the Team Game Finder to find things like highest-scoring games or best shooting performances. However, over the years basketball fans (and our users) have grown more statistically savvy and often crave a deeper perspective beyond the raw numbers. For that reason, we have included an advanced box score within our games boxes for some time. Now, we have taken the next step by allowing users to search through these advanced statistics via the Team Game Finder.

To use these tools, you can simply go to the link above and set the parameters you would like for your search. Please note that these advanced stat searches are limited to the era for which we have complete box scores (since 1985-86). Here are some examples:

• Instead of searching for most points in a game, you can now search for most points per 100 possessions in a game. Yes, we find it incredible that the most efficient offensive performance of the last 30 years was authored by the 1997-98 Clippers.
• Instead of searching for the largest point differentials, you can now search for the largest net rating differentials.
• Perhaps you would have felt better about sitting through this beauty pageant if you knew you were witnessing shot-blocking history.
• You can even use the cumulative season games feature to discover that the 1991-92 Nets, led by Chris Dudley, Derrick Coleman & Sam Bowie, had the best offensive rebounding percentage by any team since 1985.
• And that the 2011-12 Thunder had the best block percentage of that era.

Please note that cumulative searches utilizing possession-based metrics will differ slightly from some season totals found on team pages and in the team season finder because our box scores have player turnovers, but not team turnovers, which causes slight variations.

Thanks to Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors, we have 2015 arbitration estimates to flesh out our projected team payrolls for 2015. MLBTR's list can be found at this link. We have incorporated these estimates into our 2015 team payroll estimates, which can be found on table form on our front page (as seen below). The "#" column is for the number of players signed, while "Pyrl" represents the committed payroll on players signed for 2015. Finally, "Est" is an estimate of the team's final payroll for the season:

Any team can be clicked on to find a fuller table with information on individual players. There is also a mouseover for each team showing their most recent payrolls for perspective on their past spending habits.

Just a note that we've expanded the searchable options in our Player Season Finder this week.

In particular, we've added BPM and VORP to the list of searchable stats, both of which are available going back to the 1973-74 season.  If you don't know what those stats are, you may have missed this recent announcement. Also feel free to weigh in at the discussion on the APBRmetrics forum.

Also, we've added search options by a player's birth state, college, and debut seasons, either in the NBA or ABA. There's also a new option to search by award winners so you can see all seasons by MVP winners, All-NBA selections, Defensive Players of the Year, etc.

If you're new to the site, the Player Season Finder is our most popular database search tool. You can get to it by clicking on 'play-index' in the top navigation menu, then the large 'Player Season Finder' link. It allows you to search for and compare player stats for a season or a player's career (or a span of years). You can also find the number of seasons that match your criteria. As an example, you can find the highest USG% seasons of all time, most career VORP for a player from Duke, or the most points scored in a single postseason.

The new fields are highlighted in red below:

We just wanted to share a few recent site updates as we head into baseball's offseason:

We have updated things like rookie status, service time and contract status for 2015. Here's the updated data for Joe Panik, for instance:

As you can see, we've pointed out that his rookie status has now been exhausted and updated the other items, as well.

Additionally, our free agency page is now live and contains the signings thus far, as well as a list of remaining available free agents. This information can be found here. You can also follow free agent signings via our transactions page.

And finally, any new signings will be reflected on team payroll pages, which can be found as a tab on main team pages:

You often hear about dangerous workloads for NFL running backs and the struggles many have had after particularly taxing seasons. But, particularly in this era, the running game is only part of the equation for backs (though we won't opine on whether or not receptions are less taxing than rushes). Many of them are 3-down players heavily involved in the passing game. With that in mind, we've added "touches" as a searchable statistical category in the Play Index. For our purposes, we have defined "touches" as the sum of rushes, receptions, kick returns & punt returns. While Larry Johnson may famously hold the record for rush attempts in a season with 416, James Wilder has the record for touches with 492 in 1984. The most touches in a game we have in our data (since 1960) is 48 by LaDainian Tomlinson & Wilder.

As I write, the 2014 leader in touches is DeMarco Murray, with 255 through 9 games. That puts him on pace for 453 touches this season, which would be tied with Eddie George for 3rd most in NFL history and 14 more than Emmitt Smith ever had in a season.

Thanks to a recommendation from user Jon P, we have added "combined points" as a search and filter option in the Team Game Finder.

You can now search for games in which the 2 teams combined for 100+ points or the highest scoring games since the merger. Or, if you can stomach it, you can even find games with twice as many turnovers as points.

We're excited to introduce our newest statistical feature, Box Plus/Minus (BPM), developed and shared by Daniel Myers, well known as an administrator of the APBRmetrics forum and the developer of Advanced Statistical Plus/Minus (ASPM), which has performed very well empirically and to which BPM now serves as successor.

BPM is an advanced stat intended to measure a player's total contribution, calculated using box-score data that's available going back to the 1973-74 season. It follows on work done toward the Statistical Plus/Minus (SPM) concept, and ASPM, and uses long-term data sets developed by Jeremias Engelmann, the creator of ESPN's Real Plus/Minus statistic. Please visit Daniel's write-up to read more about the development of BPM, the background of the concept, and everyone that's contributed to the research.

BPM is presented intuitively, representing points per 100 possessions for which the player was on the court. For example, a player with a +4.3 BPM is said to have contributed 4.3 more points than an average player over 100 possessions, based on measurable statistical output from game box scores. The calculation makes heavy use of context dependent box score stats like USG%, TS%, STL% and others (as well as the statistical interactions between these components). We publish these as Advanced Box Score Stats and you can read about these component calculations in our glossary. Note that there is a separate calculation for the offensive component of a player's BPM, which yields both OBPM (Offensive Box Plus/Minus) and DBPM (Defensive Box Plus/Minus).

Further, BPM is scaled so that -2.0 represents a theoretical "replacement level" - thus, this concept is easily extended to permit calculations of one player's value over that theoretical threshold - that formula is [BPM - (-2.0)] * (% of minutes played), which is VORP, and interpreted as per 100 team possessions.

We'll be presenting BPM, it's offensive and defensive components, as well as VORP in the 'Advanced' table of our player pages, and likewise in our team pages:

For 2014, the leaderboards for BPM, OBPM, and DBPM, respectively, look like the following (> 1,000 MP):

And as the season gets underway, you'll be able to find BPM and its components, as well as VORP, on our actual leaderboard as well as other site features like the Play Index tools and season registers.

Thanks to a suggestion from user @AdamHarstad, we have added incompletions to the player season and game finders.

With this addition, you can search for things such as most incompletions in a season, game or career.

With Halloween right around the corner, we'll also point out that you can now query monstrosities such as THIS, as well.

If you clicked, we're very sorry you had to see that. Please use this tool responsibly!