Comparing the analytics of the top women's Curling Teams in the World

What do the best teams in the world do that is better than the rest? Here's a look at the analytics of the top 25 ranked Women's Teams in the world.

Team Homan is the best of the best

(photo courtesy Grand Slam of Curling)

The latest World Curling Rankings are based on a teams’ best results for 8 events during the 2024-2025 Curling Season, and Canada’s Rachel Homan remains in the top spot with a 71 point lead over Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni.

What is it that has kept Homan so far ahead of her rivals for the last couple of years? And what separates these elite women’s teams from the hundreds of other teams that are competing to be the best.

The analytics show that with a record of 49 & 4 this year, Team Homan has a winning percentage of .925, and they have outscored their opposition by an average of 3.4 points a game, which are both significantly higher than any of their competitors.

Team Homan is especially strong playing with the hammer. They have a Hammer Efficiency of .503 and a Steal Defence of .126, which are both the best numbers of any of the top 25 teams in the world. And they are also among the leaders playing without the hammer.

A With Hammer Index of .377

If you take a team’s Hammer Efficiency and subtract it’s Steal Defence from that number, it will show you how well a team plays when it has the hammer. And Team Homan’s With Hammer Index of .377 is significantly ahead of all of the other top 25 teams in the world.

A Without Hammer Index of .920

Team Homan is not quite as strong playing without the hammer, but when you add their Force Efficiency number of .615 to their Steal Efficiency of .305, it gives them a Without Hammer Index of .920, which is the 6th best number among the top 25 women’s teams in the world.

Canada’s Christina Black leads the field playing without the hammer, with a Without Hammer Index of 1.003. However, Black didn’t have nearly as tough a schedule as Homan, playing more than half of her games against teams outside the top 25 world rankings.

A Team Index of 1.297

When you add Team Homan’s With Hammer Index of .377 and it’s Without Hammer Index of .920, it gives them a Team Index of 1.297, which is .84 higher than the 2nd ranked team in the world, Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni

A Team Efficiency of 2.222

When you take Team Homan’s Team Index of 1.297, and add it’s Winning Percentage of .925, you get what I call a Team Efficiency number of 2.222, which is .263, or about 12 percent ahead of the number 2 ranked Tirinzoni.

Homan is the defending world champion, and is off to a 4 & 0 start at the Canadian National Championships going on right now in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Homan’s only loss to a Canadian team this year was a 5-4 loss to Kerri Einarson in the Hearing Life Tour Challenge in October, and Einarson is projected by many to be the team with the best chance of beating Homan in the Scotties this weekend. I would give Team Black an outside chance as well, based only on their analytics, but any team winning other than Homan or Einarson would be a huge surprise.

But the way Team Homan is, and has been playing all year long, it’s going to be a challenge.

You can see the analytics for all of the top women’s teams in the world by clicking on the following link - Women’s Analytics 2024/2025

You can see the analytics for all of the top men’s teams in the world by clicking on the following link - Men’s Analytics 2024/2025

I would like to thank Ken Pomeroy of doubletakeout.com and doubletakeout.substack.com for tracking the linescores and analytics for all of the teams playing all of the major events in the world throughout the season.

And of course, curlingzone.com for calculating and updating the World Rankings each week.

Definitions

Hammer Efficiency

(Hammer Efficiency is calculated by dividing the number of ends with hammer where you scored at least 2 points, divided by the total number of ends you had hammer where points were scored by either team. Blank ends are not counted.)

Steal Defence

(Steal Defence is calculated by dividing the number of stolen ends by the number of ends that a team had hammer. Blank ends are included.)

Force Efficiency

(Force Efficiency is calculated by dividing the number of ends where your opponent had hammer and scored only 1 point, by the total number of ends where they had hammer and scored in that end. Stolen or blank ends are not included in the calculation.)

Steal Efficiency

(Steal Efficiency is calculated by dividing the number of ends stolen by the total number of ends played without hammer. Blank ends are included.)