NHL Player Stats Page Redesign Lacking

Not all fans may care, but if you are an obsessed fan, work in the media, a fantasy hockey addict or just a numbers nerd, you probably noticed that something changed recently. NHL.com has redesigned the NHL Player Stats Page. This is the latest step in improving the NHL.com user experience since partnering with MLB’s Advanced Media. They have provided a pop-up Tutorial to give you a quick overview of the new features and how to navigate the page. It does provide some great new features, but it is more difficult to navigate and is still lacking in capabilities. Further, the NHL should take the lead on tracking better stats for hockey.

The best aspect of the redesign is that it helps you to better compare apples to apples with more filtering options. First of all, you can compare Season, Game, or All-Time stats. You can also break the data down further under these categories. Most importantly, there is the ability to aggregate data across multiple seasons.

What I do really like is the ability to filter stats for players within certain ranges of height and weight. I also really like being able to limit results by number of games played. This allows you to focus on bona fide NHLers and filter out outliers that skew rankings. This is especially helpful for comparing goaltending stats like save percentages. Another fun feature allows you to check boxes next to each player’s name to create a graph comparing trends between up to four players in any category. The problem is that only comparing up to four players is pretty limited.

You can look specifically at special teams for powerplay, penalty kill, shootout and faceoffs. These are great, but I could not find a way to compare the same stats strictly across even strength minutes. Other features include Bio reports which include typical bio information along with drafting history. I don’t understand the name of the “Real Time” category, but this has some useful statistics including, hits, blocks, giveaways, takeaways and more.

The Penalties category offers great details like minors, majors and misconducts. What I would like to see added to this category is number of fights. The TOI category breaks down metrics based on TOI, rather than only per game. Which makes it possible to more accurately compare individual players who may vary greatly in ice-time. It also includes more details on number and length of shifts and breaks down even strength, PP and PK.

Main Criticism of the NHL Player Stats Page

The redesign has some great features, but it has become more difficult to navigate. It can be tricky to know where to look for a specific statistic. It does offer a search function to search for a specific team or player, but it does not work well to find a specific stat metric. Personally, I would like to be able to view a variety of specific metrics together, without having to jump across multiple reports.

The solution would be the ability to create and save a custom report. Just simply check off the boxes for each stat you want to look at and go. I would especially find this useful for fantasy hockey use and blogging. For now, I will need to stick with using an Excel spreadsheet to compare players across categories like points, hits, blocks and faceoffs. Yahoo’s stats pages are also a good way to view common fantasy hockey stats together.

Are there Better Stats to Include on the NHL Player Stats Page?

One statistic that is really useless is +/- as an individual skater’s stat category. It is really two completely different stats mashed together with nothing left to interpret. Just compare +/- from any individual player from season to season and you will see a dramatic variance. Alexander Ovechkin and Alexander Edler are great examples. What does it mean? This could be due to many factors separate from the individual player: defense, offense, goaltending and/or coaching. It can also simply mean that the player in question is playing tough minutes on the PK. That being said, are there NHL player stats that could be added?

Hockey Analytics is still very young and there are plenty of opportunities to improve on its development. The most important stat that I would like to see included is possession. When I say possession, I mean actual possession. Currently, the common measurement for possession is based on shot attempts. This is interesting data to look at, but it can be muddy and difficult to interpret. Why not measure possession by using a “chess clock” to start/stop recording time as possession shifts? This could be especially useful in measuring successful penalty killing tactics.

You might recognize the “chess clock” approach as something common in soccer. Being a team sport, soccer could provide other insight into analytics as well. For example, completed passes can also be used to measure individual players along with a team’s completed passes for and against. Further, there are plenty of hockey sites listing useful stats that NHL.com lacks. Lines and goalie starts can be found a www.leftwinglock.com and injuries can be found at www.mangameslost.com. Lost games due to injury can provide a lot of insight into a bad season.

It looks like there is still plenty that the NHL can do to improve the user experience of their website visitors. What other improvements can NHL.com make for their stats pages?

Next: NHL Advanced Stats Availability Will Be Improved