Saturday, July 15, 2006
Down The Rabbit Hole
For those who have a tendency to never click on links--and I am one of those people--I would just like to let you know that several months ago I took the the time to create a page where I could start to track down all the information available on player salaries, team caps, player contracts, the CBA, and the like. Unfortunately, there is not a single site that gathers all of this information in a manner desireable to hockey fans with a more critical oulook on the game. Until such a thing occurs, and I do believe it is coming, here is the link I always start with. If you know of other sites and pages that are of value, please let me know, either through the comments or by email. We should all also consider, I believe, pooling our time, energy and hardrives into one collective force. Many of us are working on various projects requiring information and statistics that are not readily available. Yet many of us have the time and desire to look for, or complile, this information. Yet even more of us have folders upon folders of spreadsheets containing valuable, and already sorted, data. If we would like to advance the cause of what can only be called "hockey metrics," and transform our sport from one guided by subjectivity and orthodoxy into one guided by objectivity and rationality, we must begin now to collaborate. We already do so, but we must do more. It is obvious that the hockey establishment is in large part disinterested with seeking out the truth. We must therefore begin the long march ourselves.
# posted by andy grabia @ 3:57 am 
Comments:
this is probably the single best idean I've ever come across on a sports blog.
Grabia's a pinko?
Yes, communists were and are notorious for their desire to monitor things like shot location, salary caps, and other valuable statistical data.
I can't belive how quickly my proletarian plot was unearthed. Are you a superhero, RiversQ?
Andy Grabia said...
Yes, communists were and are notorious for their desire to monitor things like shot location, salary caps, and other valuable statistical data.
Uh oh, sounds like somebody knows a little too much about the inner workings at the Kremlin back in the day. I'll take that as confirmation.
I can't belive how quickly my proletarian plot was unearthed. Are you a superhero, RiversQ?
No. I'm not funny either apparently.
Anyway, I would help out.
This isn't salary-related, but no hockey debate may begin without a quick look at www.hockeydb.com.
www.nhl.com is a good stat resource too, with more indepth breakdowns on TOI, faceoff%, hits, giveaways, etc.
The www.nhlpa.com site includes updated salary data for all the teams (http://nhlpa.com/thePlayers/index.asp); if a person wants to cut and paste team data, it's easy to plug the info onto Excel spreadsheets to evaluate (unlike TSN's, which isn't as workable, I find). For instance, cut and paste the teams, and then do data sorts by column to compare defensemen salaries, or RW, or whatever. I do this at the start of every season, keep a master Excel sheet of all the salaries so I can sort it any way I choose.
I wish stats were kept on time spent in the opposition zone, time holding the puck, and many others.
Finally, the www.leafclub.blogspot blog is the ultimate blog for Toronto Maple Leaf information.
(couldn't resist)
Wardo
Some incomplete information that should be very helpful to those of you who're interesting in setting this up...
http://www.dtowneastbasketball.com/nhl.htm
Should be a nice start, I'd think?
Tsn.ca's numbers are way off. For instance, McGillis doens't count against the cap this season for NJ, and Elias' cap number is almsot $2,000,000 lower than what's listed on tsn.ca
Anyway.
I listed that link in the Legend of my "Cap Watch" post from yesterday, PDO.
And yes, Elias' salary averaged out is $6 million a year.
Dunno about MySQL and PHP skills, but I've got some Postgres and Perl skills that I imagine translate.
I sent you an email before, mc79 *koff* - the offer still stands. :)
oddly enough, this is more or less the type of stuff I do for a living and could use a side project to pad the resume a bit...
Grabia - or anyone else, if you are interested in discussing some specifics email me at stats@evasent.com and we can can throwing around some ideas.
The main challenges will be (1) determining where to get the data (preferably somewhere that isn't changing stuff too often so I can just have automated scripts grab it every night) and (2) coming up with an interface that makes it easy for a user to interact with and search. Once all the data is there we can design queries to find whatever information we want, however, it would be nice if users could come up with new queries of there own through a more simplified interface then maybe save those to the site for others. That way the site is dynamic and we can see which are most popular.
mudcrutch I could actually use someone to host it... I have sites available but this could be pretty high traffic if a lot of people end of using it.
anyway... I'm not electing myself to do it... but if you guys are interested, this is certainly within the type of stuff that I can do - really just designing how users interact with it is probably the hard part
I'm not sure that we'll really be able get are hands on that much interesting data (like historical numbers on time spent in offensive zone that was mentioned)... but if you guys can find numbers I can make a site to crunch 'em.
actually that nhl.com data that matt just referenced in his post is pretty good
I think I'll write something to download and parse a season or so and see what kind of interesting stuff I can do with it
I'm intrigued by the shot data...
On-Net Shooting % would be interesting (% of players shots that are on net)
I wonder if certain teams allow lower on-net %'s from opponents.
Just a plug
For all your stat/salary cap needs...
I've been parsing seasons since 2002 (I get better every year so my 2002-2003 data is garbage).
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this is probably the single best idean I've ever come across on a sports blog.
# posted by 
: July 15, 2006 8:27 am
: July 15, 2006 8:27 am 
Grabia's a pinko?
Yes, communists were and are notorious for their desire to monitor things like shot location, salary caps, and other valuable statistical data.
I can't belive how quickly my proletarian plot was unearthed. Are you a superhero, RiversQ?
Andy Grabia said...
Yes, communists were and are notorious for their desire to monitor things like shot location, salary caps, and other valuable statistical data.
Uh oh, sounds like somebody knows a little too much about the inner workings at the Kremlin back in the day. I'll take that as confirmation.
I can't belive how quickly my proletarian plot was unearthed. Are you a superhero, RiversQ?
No. I'm not funny either apparently.
Anyway, I would help out.
This isn't salary-related, but no hockey debate may begin without a quick look at www.hockeydb.com.
www.nhl.com is a good stat resource too, with more indepth breakdowns on TOI, faceoff%, hits, giveaways, etc.
The www.nhlpa.com site includes updated salary data for all the teams (http://nhlpa.com/thePlayers/index.asp); if a person wants to cut and paste team data, it's easy to plug the info onto Excel spreadsheets to evaluate (unlike TSN's, which isn't as workable, I find). For instance, cut and paste the teams, and then do data sorts by column to compare defensemen salaries, or RW, or whatever. I do this at the start of every season, keep a master Excel sheet of all the salaries so I can sort it any way I choose.
I wish stats were kept on time spent in the opposition zone, time holding the puck, and many others.
Finally, the www.leafclub.blogspot blog is the ultimate blog for Toronto Maple Leaf information.
(couldn't resist)
Wardo
Some incomplete information that should be very helpful to those of you who're interesting in setting this up...
http://www.dtowneastbasketball.com/nhl.htm
Should be a nice start, I'd think?
Tsn.ca's numbers are way off. For instance, McGillis doens't count against the cap this season for NJ, and Elias' cap number is almsot $2,000,000 lower than what's listed on tsn.ca
Anyway.
# posted by : July 15, 2006 4:09 pm
: July 15, 2006 4:09 pm I listed that link in the Legend of my "Cap Watch" post from yesterday, PDO.
And yes, Elias' salary averaged out is $6 million a year.
Dunno about MySQL and PHP skills, but I've got some Postgres and Perl skills that I imagine translate.
I sent you an email before, mc79 *koff* - the offer still stands. :)
# posted by : July 16, 2006 11:24 am
: July 16, 2006 11:24 am oddly enough, this is more or less the type of stuff I do for a living and could use a side project to pad the resume a bit...
Grabia - or anyone else, if you are interested in discussing some specifics email me at stats@evasent.com and we can can throwing around some ideas.
The main challenges will be (1) determining where to get the data (preferably somewhere that isn't changing stuff too often so I can just have automated scripts grab it every night) and (2) coming up with an interface that makes it easy for a user to interact with and search. Once all the data is there we can design queries to find whatever information we want, however, it would be nice if users could come up with new queries of there own through a more simplified interface then maybe save those to the site for others. That way the site is dynamic and we can see which are most popular.
mudcrutch I could actually use someone to host it... I have sites available but this could be pretty high traffic if a lot of people end of using it.
anyway... I'm not electing myself to do it... but if you guys are interested, this is certainly within the type of stuff that I can do - really just designing how users interact with it is probably the hard part
# posted by : July 17, 2006 1:27 pm
: July 17, 2006 1:27 pm I'm not sure that we'll really be able get are hands on that much interesting data (like historical numbers on time spent in offensive zone that was mentioned)... but if you guys can find numbers I can make a site to crunch 'em.
# posted by : July 17, 2006 1:31 pm
: July 17, 2006 1:31 pm actually that nhl.com data that matt just referenced in his post is pretty good
I think I'll write something to download and parse a season or so and see what kind of interesting stuff I can do with it
# posted by : July 17, 2006 1:37 pm
: July 17, 2006 1:37 pm I'm intrigued by the shot data...
On-Net Shooting % would be interesting (% of players shots that are on net)
I wonder if certain teams allow lower on-net %'s from opponents.
# posted by : July 17, 2006 1:59 pm
: July 17, 2006 1:59 pm Just a plug
For all your stat/salary cap needs...
I've been parsing seasons since 2002 (I get better every year so my 2002-2003 data is garbage).
# posted by : July 20, 2006 8:51 pm
: July 20, 2006 8:51 pm Post a Comment
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