Hockey Day Across America 2013

Last year for Hockey Day Across America, I took a look at the birthplaces of NHL players whose teams were playing on Hockey Day Across America. I decided to update the visualization this year but just focusing on the number of US born players that are currently playing in the NHL during the abbreviated 2012-2013 season.

What states do hockey players come from in the US?

As a hockey fan, I follow several hockey bloggers and hockey reporters on Twitter.  Earlier today, hockey writer James Mirtle from The Globe and Mail tweeted out a link to a very well organized Google Docs spreadsheet (with a nice chart embedded) in which he had compiled stats regarding where hockey players  have come from within the United States.  Since there isn't much other hockey stats going on right now with the lockout I'm looking for all sorts of other hockey related data viz projects and took advantage of the data he made available.

Where are they now? NHL players abroad during the 2012-2013 lockout.

This is not a good time for hockey fans.  When the collective bargaining agreement between the NHL owners the the NHL Players' Association expired and no new agreement had been reached, the owners decided to lockout the NHLPA.  This has resulted in a delayed start to the season and a possible repeat of the 2004-2005 season when the entire season was scrapped.

As the lockout became more and more certain, NHL players who were originally from Europe started to head back home and sign contracts to play with teams back in their home countries.  As the exodus of players continued, lists started to be compiled to allow fans to keep track of which players were playing for which teams.  However, most of these lists have been unable to tell the complete story of how many players are playing for which leagues and teams and in which cities and countries.

Hartigan's Hockey Team Ratings

A while back hockey fan extraordinaire @StephHartigan ranked NHL teams by her own set of personal criteria.  As I am always looking for new, unique data sets to play with in Tableau, she graciously provided me with a google docs spreadsheet of her rankings.  I took her team rankings and turned it into an interactive viz that she can share with her friends so they can have a better understanding of why she might choose one team over another.

NHL Player and Team Stats v2.0

The 2011-2012 NHL regular season is finished, and the first round of the playoffs is well underway.  During the latter part of the hockey season, I took some time to revise and update my original NHL player stats data viz.  I ended up with something radically different than what I created last summer for the Tableau sports data contest.  It is not #fancystats, like what Neil Greenberg specializes in, but I think looking at hockey data in this format is fun and informative.  Check it out...

Player Nationalities for Hockey Day Across America

Yesterday, the NHL participated in USA Hockey's Hockey Weekend Across America with their own Hockey Day Across America activities.  For hockey fans, such as myself, it is great to see the sport of hockey being promoted in the United States.  The day featured some great games on national television, and had special events around the country to encourage kids and families to try out hockey for the first time.


The television line up featured three great games:  St. Louis Blues vs Chicago Blackhawks, Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Buffalo Sabres, and the  Detroit Red Wings vs. San Jose Sharks. There was only one disappointment however -- the Red Wings dominated the airwaves yesterday.  (Full disclosure:  I am a St. Louis Blues fan which means I am very much biased against the Red Wings.)  In fact, Laura (@hildymac), from the blog Thrashing the Blues, and I had a Twitter conversation about this most disturbing aspect of HDAA.  As an out-of-town Blues fan, it is rare that we get to see them on national TV.  After all, the Blues/Blackhawks rivalry is a great rivalry, and as Laura duly noted there were quite a few US born players on both the Blackhawks and Blues teams.  So why not give  the Blues/Blackhawks game more national coverage instead of giving it mainly regional coverage?


This got me to thinking...

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”

I love that quote from Wayne Gretzky even though it is obvious and has become a bit cliche'.


The St. Louis Blues had a little bit of extra time off after the All-Star game.  Tonight is their first game since the break.  I wanted to publish one more data viz before they started back up again.  After that, I will probably wait till the end of the season to publish any additional hockey data visualizations.


This visualization is taking a look at their goal scoring (or as many Blues' fans would say -- their lack of goal scoring).  They need to score more goals if they want to remain competitive for the remainder of the season and (hopefully) the playoffs.  So I put together something that shows who has the best goal percentage, goals per game, which players need to improve their goal scoring ability, and which players need to shoot the puck more!

St. Louis Blues Players Performance at the All-Star Break

 The NHL All-Star break is the perfect time to get caught up on player stats and to take a look at their performance during the first half of the season.  I haven't published anything for a while and I've been dying to do a hockey viz.  So I took advantage of the empty schedule, scraped the data, and here are the results.

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!

Explore NHL Player Stats from 2010-11 Season: Official Entry for Tableau Sports Data Viz Contest (1 of 2)

When I was younger, I loved choose your own adventure books.  However, I always got peeved when I wanted to choose an option that the book did not make available to me.  Or that several of the paths in the book seemed to have the same ending.  Well, now that I am older and am in control of the "story" I will let you choose which path to take in order to determine your own ending.  Choose your stats to mash-up. Choose how you want to view the players in the chart.  Highlight teams, players, or positions.  Or drill down to look at specific divisions or teams.

This visualization might seem intense, but if you take some time and choose your path wisely, you'll find that there are a wide variety of endings to choose from.  I had a lot of fun making it and even more fun playing with it.  Let me know what sorts of interesting tidbits you get as a result.