September 13, 2007

NHL Changes Data Format

Along with the Jersey changes it appears the NHL wanted to make their reporting of games a little more "user friendly". Hopefully they've managed to make sure all the files are the same, although I suspect they'll still have the French versions.

Positives:
+ There is ON ICE information for every event!
+ Nice break down of shots per situation.
+ Moved goalie info to Event Summary
+ Missed shots have distances.
+ Every event has a zone for where the action occurred.
+ Cloutier seems to be himself [3-10] [couldn't help myself]
+ Break down icetime by situation [NHL publishes 4v3 time and 5v3 time].

Negative:
- This could take weeks to figure out formatting to get information into my database
- They disabled left clicks for who knows what reason.
- The files are HUGE.
- Play by Play includes the header every so often, but doesn't explain why [looks like it's for com. break]
- Still don't include the X-Y cords. for shots.

Overall I think I can work with these, formatting looks simple and consistent.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is not more user friendly. The old play by play actually used to list the names of the players who were on the ice when a goal was scored, now you just get the players sweater number. Unless you know all the players sweater numbers it isn;t any easier. Now there is more information there so that is good but I can't say it is more readable.

My main hope is that the shift data is more accurate. There were a lot of flaws in it last year (i.e. missing shifts).

JavaGeek said...

If you hover your mouse over the sweater number you'll get a name [a little bit time consuming though for all 12 names]

Earl Sleek said...

Good stuff, JG. I'll say that I was shocked/surprised when I threw open the box score last night. Of course my roommate wasn't very impressed...

Anonymous said...

The change in format is kinda of annoying because it breaks all my scripts and now the parsing is even more convoluted... Using Excel seems to provide clean data, but not immediately useful.