Elite League mid-season update

A mid-season look at what's going on within the EIHL

In the past few weeks, we’ve looked at how teams are doing halfway through this Elite League season, so it’s only fair that we take a look at some of the things going on within the league itself.

Average attendances

The average attendance for 135 league games to date this season is 2,967. This is an increase of 3.99% compared to the same period last season (2,853 across 146 games until 29 December). The end of season average in 2018/19 was 2,867 per league game - this season we still have New Year's fixtures to come, plus the race for league titles and playoffs. In the Challenge Cup, the average attendance has so far been 3,259 per game. This is significantly higher than the season total of 2,603 in 2018/19.

Season 2020/21

We have already been working on plans for the 2020/21 season as you will have read with changes to roster regulations, and an invitation for any teams wishing to apply to the league to do so. When there is an update from this process it will be made, but the overall aim is to make sure that plans for next season can be made by all teams as early as possible.

Penalty data

Earlier this month representatives from the Department of Player Safety attended the December Board Meeting to take questions from team owners and discuss general operations. Board Members felt it was a very useful session, especially to hear examples from other leagues and the wider hockey world. Discussions about review processes systems continue in order to improve how they currently operate.

With the change of statistics providers for this season, the league holds much more information about each game. We are able to break down which types of penalties teams take more than others, which periods they are more penalised in, and how penalty types differ over the course of games. As an example, so-called ‘Restraining Fouls’ are the most called penalties in the Elite League – within this, Holding and Tripping are by far the most prevalent and, across the league, all bar a few teams take the majority of these penalties in the second period. "This is the kind of data that we have to work more proactively with together with coaches," explained Head of Hockey Operations Mike Hicks. "In general, second periods see by far the most penalties called, so while we work with the referees and review what they're calling in games, there is also a part that coaches can play with this data as well."

He continued: "Within the statistics system we also know which referee calls which penalty in each game. So in addition to working with a coach where a team is being repeatedly penalised for the same infraction, the same happens with officiating where there are patterns of penalty types. Each penalty called in the league is cut after games and reviewed with the officials working those games, while there are also other areas of officiating that are clipped and sent out both individually and to all EIHL officials highlighting both positive and negative practices."

Game durations

A focus of the league going into the new year will be to improve game durations. On average, this season’s games are taking 2 hours 23 minutes to complete. The goal is to reduce this average down much closer to the 2:00-2:10 mark, and we can see from the data which venues have consistently high game durations. Part of the process here is to look at the reasons why, but also to work with the game officials, players and coaches to make sure that games do not take an unnecessarily long amount of time to complete. While this may mean simple things like linesmen getting players to the faceoff quicker, it also requires players and coaches to be quicker with their changes during stoppages of play.

Bench strength

Finally, the average roster size so far for this season for an Elite League game has been 19: 17 skaters and two goalies made up of 14 imports, 3 British Players, and 2 U23s. Based on the changes to roster regulations next season, to run the same bench size a coach will need to do this with one more British player when the number of imports is reduced to 13.