NHL.com Play by Play data

SaskRinkRat

Registered User
Apr 1, 2010
502
0
Hey everyone,

I'm curious if there is a season rollup of the NHL.com play by play data available online anywhere. They make it available game by game (i.e., http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20122013/PL030147.HTM ), but it would be great to have entire season(s) worth of data accessible.

If not, I was thinking I could create a macro in excel that would allow it to be easily dumped into a single database, but I'd probably need to crowd-source a few people to help scrape the 1200 games per season into excel files.

Would there be any interest in this?
 

Cunneen

Registered User
May 8, 2013
94
0
Well there are some great stats for power play on stats.hockey analysis that I already converted to excel. I have from 2007-2013 advanced power play stats if you want me to send them to you.
 

SaskRinkRat

Registered User
Apr 1, 2010
502
0
Are the stats on hockeyanalysis.com available on an individual play by play basis?

What I would like to get access to, eventually, is a database that lists literally every single play that happened all season. Think of it like the game by game play by play I linked above, only in an easily manipulable excel / csv file that contains every game of the season(s).
 

almostawake

Registered User
Jan 19, 2006
4,805
620
Lausanne
Sorry, I think I'm missing something. What step do you need people for?

I've done this in the past, my basic data flow was: Scrape html from nhl.com; Extract the data to a data structure (I recommend the beautiful soup python library); Output it to a standardized format.
 

Cunneen

Registered User
May 8, 2013
94
0
Sorry, I think I'm missing something. What step do you need people for?

I've done this in the past, my basic data flow was: Scrape html from nhl.com; Extract the data to a data structure (I recommend the beautiful soup python library); Output it to a standardized format.

What I think SaskRinkRat is asking for is a way to convert play by play data into excell form. SaskRinkRat my guess is there is but you would need some type of data/computer software that has that capability.
 

almostawake

Registered User
Jan 19, 2006
4,805
620
Lausanne
What I think SaskRinkRat is asking for is a way to convert play by play data into excell form. SaskRinkRat my guess is there is but you would need some type of data/computer software that has that capability.

Yeah, that is the second step of the dataflow I outlined. You write a script that extracts the table data directly from the raw .html and stores/outputs it in whatever format you like.
 

Cunneen

Registered User
May 8, 2013
94
0
Yeah, that is the second step of the dataflow I outlined. You write a script that extracts the table data directly from the raw .html and stores/outputs it in whatever format you like.

is that a hard thing to learn (I'm only a junior in high school so I haven't really learned much when it comes to computer science and stuff like that)? I'd really like to learn how to do that, since it would allow me to have access to far more data for my research.
 

66871

Registered User
May 17, 2009
2,507
708
Maine
I would be interested in working on this. I am pretty decent in pho scripting and have done some work extracting sports data from natural language sources.

Unfortunately I'm in the middle of moving and in taking a few

But I would be willing to do two things:

If you send me a sample file, I'll provide some guidance on getting started and perhaps even a seed script so you can learn by example.

2) this fall if you still need help. I would be able to dive in a bit deeper.
 

Cunneen

Registered User
May 8, 2013
94
0
I would be interested in working on this. I am pretty decent in pho scripting and have done some work extracting sports data from natural language sources.

Unfortunately I'm in the middle of moving and in taking a few

But I would be willing to do two things:

If you send me a sample file, I'll provide some guidance on getting started and perhaps even a seed script so you can learn by example.

2) this fall if you still need help. I would be able to dive in a bit deeper.

Hey could I email you (seems easier to communicate that way rather than through this hockey board). My email is [email protected] If you could help me out in anyway that'd be great.
 

Bear of Bad News

Your Third or Fourth Favorite HFBoards Admin
Sep 27, 2005
13,361
26,528
That's a weird one - not only does that one not come up, but all of the other associated reports link to a (blank) game between Carolina and Tampa in November of 2007.
 

Patman

Registered User
Feb 23, 2004
330
0
www.stat.uconn.edu
Webscraping seems to be the in thing nowadays. Lots of talk of using it in statistical projects and products. In some cases scraping off the internet is being used to reduce the number of physical purchases needed to compute economic figures.

It'd be nice if somebody scraped it off into a public repository but that'd require more than what I believe anybody is willing to put together.
 

notdave

Registered User
Apr 26, 2013
38
18
Ottawa, ON
I'm working on getting at least the past six seasons into a database right now, with plans to put it online. It'll have every play from all of these play-by-play reports, and hopefully a very, very good filtering system so you can calculate whatever you want.

It's unfortunate that there are a few reports missing or incomplete for each season, though. Here's another one I've encountered:
http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20092010/PL020081.HTM
 

pucka lucka

Registered User
Apr 7, 2010
5,913
2,581
Ottawa
I'm working on getting at least the past six seasons into a database right now, with plans to put it online. It'll have every play from all of these play-by-play reports, and hopefully a very, very good filtering system so you can calculate whatever you want.

It's unfortunate that there are a few reports missing or incomplete for each season, though. Here's another one I've encountered:
http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/20092010/PL020081.HTM

I've already done most of this. I've event sourced every draft,and 6 years worth of games. I can do all the games that have reports with the click of a button. I am mostly making sure the quality of data is high. I have every player as well. I am going to start creating projections for all the standard stats, then i'll tackle advanced, then some cool data vis if i have time.
 

MainDotC

Depth Defenceman
Apr 29, 2007
18,987
10
Westerville, OH
Anyone still working on this ? I've googled for an API and found this on my first search http://developer.sportsdatallc.com/docs/NHL_API but it appears to be subscription-based. I can totally understand the necessity of this - having paid, dedicated staff ensuring the data is available and accurate - but I was just curious if anyone had their own API or DB to access. I realize that if you did then potentially several developers would attempt hitting your DB to query but I just thought I'd ask.

If not then I can follow the aforementioned method of scraping and formatting. Thanks.
 

schuckers

Registered User
Feb 21, 2013
80
0
For those who know R, the nhlscrapr package has a way to extract all of the data into a very usable format. Kudos to Sam Ventura and Andrew Thomas for making this publicly available. Might even be worth learning R just for that.
 

Shrimper

Trick or ruddy treat
Feb 20, 2010
104,169
5,248
Essex
I seem to recall a website that had lots of statistical analysis of players on it. Think it might've been called something like hockey analysis but it had info on different strength success for players etc.

Also, does anyone know a website that charts where people start their shifts in a game? Or that website that has the time on ice for a player in a game? Thanks.
 

PenguinMario

Registered User
Oct 21, 2011
1,041
1
Los Angeles
I seem to recall a website that had lots of statistical analysis of players on it. Think it might've been called something like hockey analysis but it had info on different strength success for players etc.

Also, does anyone know a website that charts where people start their shifts in a game? Or that website that has the time on ice for a player in a game? Thanks.

Sounds like stats.hockeyanalysis.com for the top graf, though behindthenet.ca has a lot of similar data. It's a little less robust in my opinion.

Timeonice.com might have what you're looking for in the bottom graf, just make sure you grab the five digit game code from the box score.
 

CaniacSZN

Registered User
May 20, 2013
379
652
Sounds like stats.hockeyanalysis.com for the top graf, though behindthenet.ca has a lot of similar data. It's a little less robust in my opinion.

Timeonice.com might have what you're looking for in the bottom graf, just make sure you grab the five digit game code from the box score.

Where exactly is the 5 digit code? I can't find it or at least when I think I do and put it in its not valid
 

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Ad

-->