Where to Get Your Fancy Stats
steve laidlaw
2014-10-25

Rob lists some of the best resources for advanced stats.
Hockey analytics has started to hit the mainstream, paving the way for dozens of websites where you can find non-traditional statistics like Corsi, PDO and player usage charts. Some of them are traditional sites that have added some so-called fancy stats for extra seasoning, others are focused more exclusively on these new advances, and some few are devoted entirely to one specific innovation. Here is a summary of where all these websites can be found, and what information they contain.
The Basics
Let’s start with the basics, which is where to find basic, traditional statistics about each player throughout their entire careers. While this information can be found in dozens of places, some websites have some neat features that are worthy of special mention.
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– The official NHL website has each player’s league ranking in each category, when they recorded their most recent goal and assist, and the types of penalties they’ve taken (e.g. Tripping).
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– ESPN‘s website has an interesting split where a player’s stats are broken down by how much rest they had between games.
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– The Internet Hockey Database has statistics for every single hockey player, in every single league, throughout all its history.
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– Quant Hockey actually has charts with each player’s career statistics, and allows you to compare players visually.
Hockey Reference
Hockey Reference includes almost endless bells and whistles, including how to pronounce a player’s name, where the player ranks all-time (according to fans), where they finished in awards voting, complete scoring logs (so you can see who assisted on their goals, for example).
As for the newer stats, HR even has a new Beta section, which is the only place where you can get a player’s season-by-season breakdown of RTSS stats (like hits) and faceoffs, and one of only two places where you can get non-traditional statistics like Corsi (i.e. Attempted team shots, for and against), on-ice shooting and save percentages, and how often they start in the offensive zone, in the same way. They have it for the playoffs, too!
Finally, HR has the fantastic player season finder, among other tools, to search NHL history for players whose statistics fall within certain ranges. This is great for finding comparables.
Non-Traditional Stats Sources
Ok, now what about some of the more non-traditional statistics that are out there? First of all, today’s new "fancy stats" ultimately come from the data found in NHL game files. From there, certain programmers make tools that can scrape and parse the content of those files, and aggregate them into a nice website. The most common tool is called Nice Time on Ice or NHLscrapr, but you don’t really need to go there unless you’re building a website of your own, or looking for data you can’t find in an aggregated website.
In fact, if you’re looking for game-by-game information, there are far better options than trying to collect it yourself.
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Natural Stat Trick is a brand new website that organizes all the key information on a game-by-game basis, including shot attempt differential throughout the contest, and who matched up alongside who, and against who, and what attempted shot differential occurred during those matchups.
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Another new website, Hockey Stats, is a more condensed version of much the same thing. It was introduced by Greg Sinclair, who created the fantastic Super Shot Search to visualize the location of the shots (and “shamelessly” ripped off my player usage charts– I kid).