Where do commentators get their facts?

[themangler]

Was watching the Panther-Canadiens game and the commentators said that the Canadians are 18-0 in games where they have scored at least 3 goals.

I love these type of small facts and wonder where I can get more or similar ones?
NHL.com offers lots of stats individually but not like that

Click to read more...

 

[Doctor No]

For goalie information, I receive about one e-mail a month from people associated with team media (mostly NHL/AHL, but some others).

A lot of teams have their own dedicated research guy(s). My all-time favorite is with the Islanders, Eric Hornick - he's well known in the research community, and you can find him on Twitter here:

https://twitter.com/ehornick

 

[Nunymare]

The Oilers have a guy who broadcasts stuff throughout the press box I think. Not sure if other arenas have that, but I'd assume so.

 

[talkinaway]

I've seen these huge media pamphlets online that they must update after every game that have all these matrices of things - like how many games a team is ahead at the end of the first period, etc. Once in awhile the Bruins will accidentally publish a link to the media page and/or the gameday pamphlet.

It'll also have things like the historical record of the two teams - both overall and at the home team's rink. So if the Bruins are playing in Nashville, they'll say that the Bruins are 4-7-2 when they're on the road against Nashville. (Note: Not an actual statistic.) Frankly, a stat like that doesn't matter to me much; teams change so much that anything beyond 5 years is a historical (and possibly psychological) quirk and not much else.

 

[AdmiralsFan24]

I would imagine they're handed out media notes before the game to look at and if something interesting jumps out from those notes, they use them on the broadcast.

 

[zbubble]

Elias Sports Bureau. http://www.esb.com

 

[themangler]

Thanks for the responses guys!

One thing I've been looking a lot for is stats on team shooting.
Not just shots on goal total/per game. I would like to know how many shots are fired as a total. (shots on goal, missed goal, blocked shots)

I know corsi is basically that, if I have read up properly. But no one gives away corsi stats from what I can tell.

Also a question. What does Corsi For and Corsi Against mean? Is corsi for all the shots the team have made and corsi against all the shots the team have "taken" totally?

 

[maplehawk]

NHL has a media site with in-depth stats and game notes for every game.

You have to apply and be approved then you just login to it. It's easy enough - I got accepted for THW.

 

[hatterson]

Thanks for the responses guys!

One thing I've been looking a lot for is stats on team shooting.
Not just shots on goal total/per game. I would like to know how many shots are fired as a total. (shots on goal, missed goal, blocked shots)

I know corsi is basically that, if I have read up properly. But no one gives away corsi stats from what I can tell.

Also a question. What does Corsi For and Corsi Against mean? Is corsi for all the shots the team have made and corsi against all the shots the team have "taken" totally?

Corsi For is how many shot attempts your team took.

Corsi Against is how many shot attempts the opposition took

 

[_vivelequebec_]

During a Bell Centre visit tour during the 08-09 offseason I got my hand on a book they give to every journalist on the press box. It has a few hundreds of pages and you'll find EVERYTHING in it, player's favorite meal kind of things (I'm serious). The NHL releases it at the beginning of the season.

 

[talkinaway]

Check out this link I found from the Bruins' main site:

https://link.nhl.com/static/[email protected]?1420346684000&navid=DL|BOS|home

It looks like one of those "hundred page media guides" - sans favorite food info. What's more baffling to me is how/if live commentators would look up the stats on the fly. Or even how they'd skim the guide for interesting facts - seriously, 99% of the stuff is completely uninteresting to even a stat geek. (Dennis Seidenberg was the only goal scorer in the 11/12/14 6-1 blowout against the Maple Leafs? Who cares!)

It must take a lot of time and talent to distill and curate this info into interesting nuggets. Last year I saw the Kings@Bruins game, and the night before, just happened to notice that Marchand was tied for SHG leaders across the NHL. He scored a beauty of a SHG that afternoon. But 99% of the time, I doubt I'd even know an "important" fact like that.

 

[hatterson]

Check out this link I found from the Bruins' main site:

https://link.nhl.com/static/[email protected]?1420346684000&navid=DL|BOS|home

It looks like one of those "hundred page media guides" - sans favorite food info. What's more baffling to me is how/if live commentators would look up the stats on the fly. Or even how they'd skim the guide for interesting facts - seriously, 99% of the stuff is completely uninteresting to even a stat geek. (Dennis Seidenberg was the only goal scorer in the 11/12/14 6-1 blowout against the Maple Leafs? Who cares!)

It must take a lot of time and talent to distill and curate this info into interesting nuggets. Last year I saw the Kings@Bruins game, and the night before, just happened to notice that Marchand was tied for SHG leaders across the NHL. He scored a beauty of a SHG that afternoon. But 99% of the time, I doubt I'd even know an "important" fact like that.

Sometimes they browse for interesting factoids themselves, but they also have several underlings/interns who would do more mundane research and compile the interesting stuff for them.