Thursday, July 28, 2011

Which NHL players benefit from more shifts?: Official Entry for Tableau Sports Data Viz Contest (2 of 2)

Tableau allows us to enter up to two visualizations in their contest.  So after building the monster Explore NHL Player Stats I took some time to figure out what a more manageable data visualization would look like based off the results I was getting from exploring the player stats.

I have always been a fan of the plus/minus stat.  I always thought it was a good way to measure how well players play together on the ice.  A player's plus/minus increases by +1 when their team scores while that player is on the ice.  However, it also decreases -1 whenever the opponent scores while that player is on the ice.  I compare that against the average number of shifts a player has during a game and we can start to see which players benefit from having more shifts. 

It is another scatter plot, but with the filters, you can narrow your view and compare conferences and divisions and teams.  I also added a box based off of the min and max values for shifts and plus/minus.  This allows you to compare how groups of players (divisions, conferences, teams) compare against one another.  However, before you get that far, just take a look at the visualization as is.  Which conference's players seems to have a better plus/minus the more shifts they have?

Let me know what you think!



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