Two: Where to Find NHL Stats, A Novice’s Guide

The SHL

The SHL’s stats page offers a wide variety of #fancystats (some of which you need to work out on your own from their raw data).

There are four important sections of their stats page that I would draw your attention to.

Shots

Aside from the total shots on goal registered, this page also lists total shots on goal on the power play and penalty kill (meaning you can do some quick math and figure out how many shots were taken at even strength, always a handy thing to know!). It also lists “missed and blocked shots,” i.e., the essential ingredients in Corsi. This is going to come in handy in a moment.

Power Play Shots

The “power play” section lists “power play shots wide” (or missed shots):

As I’ve written about before, FenwickFor per 60 is the most reliable predictor of power play success. Well, with both the total number of unblocked shot attempts (shots on goal and missed shots) on the power play and the power play time on ice per 60 number for each player, with a little math we can mock up a rough FF/60 number for each player.

Time On Ice

The TOI page breaks down each player’s time on ice for each on-ice situation (even strength, power play and penalty kill) and puts it into a per game number. Using the even strength TOI for each player and their total number of shot attempts (and a little math) we can arrive a shot rate per 60 for each player.

This kind of information (shot rates on the power play and at even strength) can give us valuable information when considering prospects from the Swedish league, especially young prospects who, through lack of playing time, likely have small boxcar sample sizes.

McKeen’s CHL Reports

Before it went down, extraskater was the place to go for CHL stats. Before that, however, the folks over at McKeen’s created an interactive database with a variety of CHL stats (I’ve written about it here; and, while the site remains buggy and un-updated, it is still very useful).

Other than the stats available through the CHL team pages, two items stand out here as useful:

First, the red rectangle points to even strength goals and assists. Combine the two and you can easily see how much of a player’s points were earned the hard way (as opposed to on the power play). Unfortunately, to get this information through the CHL stats pages is torturous and frustrating.

Second, the blue rectangle shows the number of goals a player was one the ice for and against. This information can be used in a variety of ways: 1) to calculate the on-ice goal difference for a player at evens; 2) to compare a player’s on-ice goal difference with his team’s (this information has to come from the CHL websites); and, to calculate, with the help of all even strength points, a player’s IPP.

Elite Prospects

Elite prospects offers a wealth of information on hockey players outside the NHL. I imagine most hockey fans are somewhat familiar with it. While not strictly a #fancystats matter, Elite Prospects offers two pieces of information I find invaluable and believe deserve wider acknowledgment.

To take a look at them, let’s look at Teemu Hartikainen’s page:

1) Elite Prospects offers information about the length of contract engagements for players overseas. This information can be very helpful when trying to think through whether a player may be interested and/or able to make the jump to the NHL.

2) The website also offers short, pithy scouting reports on most players of note. I find these enormously helpful when trying to get up to speed on players I have little information on.

The Hockey News

The great virtue of The Hockey News’ website for me is there pro scouting reports. Here’s Taylor Hall’s:

Most NHL players have a short, helpful report like this. It is one of my go-to sources for information when a player I’m not entirely familiar with comes up.

The End

This is by no means an exhaustive primer on all the hockey information sources available. Nor, it is an exhaustive primer on how to use all the sources it takes up. Finally, it is not meant for those well-acquainted with #fancystats. More than likely, this article will strike them as old hat.

The purpose of this article is to try and put to practice my sense that a kind of democratization process is taking place among hockey’s fanbase. In order to deepen that process, I believe everyone interested ought to be helped to make use of the various new tools now made available to us.

The online world of hockey information is radically diffuse and can be incredibly cumbersome to navigate. With any luck this article will make the effort to self-educate on these matters a little bit easier.