People really seem to like hockey analytics these days.
So much so that now this is a thing.
Last year I threw together a brief list of links for people interested in perusing #fancystats for the 2014 season and one of the big debuts was that of www.extraskater.com. Extraskater was the work of Darryl Metcalf, who you may notice is on the list above.
The Edmonton Oilers hired Tyler Dellow. An as-yet-unnamed team has hired Corey Sznajder, also known by his Twitter handle ShutdownLine. Eric Tulsky is off the market. Numerous others in various markets have been snapped up too. It was a big year for #fancystats that should bring about changes to the discussion of analytics to some degree.
Some excellent resources no longer being available presents problems. The hockey world isn’t as informed without the archives at mc79hockey.com readily available, for instance. The ease of access afforded by ExtraSkater will surely be missed.
Yet we still have significant resources available for hockey analytics to continue to develop as this season progresses. This post is intended to provide a one stop shopping spot for readers of Defending Big D (and I guess outsiders too) who want to view the best of what is out there.
The List:
Progressive Hockey is awesome. They provide line stats, WOWY analysis, player stats, and even AHL statistics. Did you know Jason Jaffray led the AHL in primary assists? No? Did you know half of Travis Morin’s points came on the powerplay? Did you know Brett Ritchie only had three less points at even strength than Morin in less ice time?
If you dug around the AHL section of Progressive Hockey you would have. It’s a fantastic resource and a welcome addition for 2015.
War On Ice is trying to take up the mantle of ExtraSkater. We’ll see how things go, but it looks promising so far. They have game recaps and full stats like ExtraSkater had.
Nice Time On Ice is still around and kicking. Based off of the original timeonice, this site spits out individual game stats for every game played. Supposedly it may not be updated this year, but we shall see.
The Super Shot Search is still around. You can look at shot data by a number of criteria. This resource is very valuable if you have a specific query for which you would like to view the underlying data. Greg Sinclair, curator (??) of the site is also putting together hockeystats.ca , which does a lot of the functions of ExtraSkater.
Hockey Analysis has gobs of data, though some of it can be a bit difficult to work with if you aren’t completely familiar with what you are looking at. You should definitely give it a go if you’re interested in the subject matter.
Check out Hockey Abstract for all of your player usage chart needs.
It never got completed, but Eric Tulsky was curating a #fancystats reference library. It contains a lot of fascinating source material. Keep in mine some links, particularly those to mc79hockey, are no longer online. But if you have time and dedication you can learn so much by digging through the linked articles.
The old standard is still around. To use it you have to click on Old Behindthenet site. You then click on a link regardless of the year. Finally you change the year to whatever it is you want (2014 for the new season, when it goes live) to view. It takes more dedication to use than ExtraSkater, but ExtraSkater was founded partially in response to questions posed because of Behindthenet. Almost anything you could find at ExtraSkater is and was already at Behindthenet.
Other resources are out there for sure, and if you would like a resource included please let me know. We can curate a list of writers to follow if you like too, but for now this list of resources will do.