More data! We’re up to around 275 games now (hope to hit 400 by the playoffs) and I thought it would be a good time to share some more. Today you’ll be getting something new from the previous releases: which players were on the ice for each passing sequence. Now, I’m writing this short post to explain a few things about this process.
Because on-ice data requires time-stamped events to link between the NHL Play-by-Play files and whatever it is you’re tracking (exits, entries, etc.), we’ve been linking up the PBP files throughout the season in our tracking sheets. The sheets the same as before, but if you scroll to the right, you’ll see the players that were on the ice according to the NHL broken down by team.
Now, many of the events we recorded did not match up with the NHL PBP files and here is why: the excel template I drop the PBP file into does a 10-second sweep in either direction to find the closest event to link to – there isn’t always one to find. So, instead of player numbers, you’ll get this message: “Event Not in PBP of >10 Second Difference.”
There are many shots and chances that go unrecorded in an NHL game: whiffs, broken sticks on shots, and sometimes I think they just miss things. They also will record them at odd times, way past the time of the event. Ten seconds seemed like a good cutoff so as to not pull the wrong players. And, you will still see that in certain situations where a defenseman (one example) will make a good pass out of his zone to spring his team on the attack and then go for a change. He will get credit in our data for creating the transition, but may not be on the ice for it according to the NHL when the shot is actually taken.
Anyways, the data is below. Definitions on the Master_Raw_Data spreadsheet. Team On-Ice files are in CSV format. If you have any questions, let me know on Twitter.
Hockey Graphs 