The NHL in partnership with SAP unveiled its new statistics pages on NHL.com, "the first of several innovations planned for the next 18 months that represent sweeping changes to the scope of hockey statistics," according to Pat Pickens of the N.Y. TIMES. NHL COO John Collins said, "This is a game-changer in terms of the digital record of everything happening on the ice." Pickens noted the first phase "included the introduction of 45 metrics, nine of which had not previously been quantified by any advanced-stats site." The league "hopes to incorporate bar graphs and comparisons by April and would like to add player tracking, using chips in the puck and in players’ jerseys, to record precise, real-time data on every player." Chicago-based Sportvision "will produce the chips for the NHL." The new statistics "will be available within 30 minutes of the end of each game, and league officials said they hoped to be able to update the data by the end of each period by the end of the regular season." For the final phase, scheduled for the '16-17 season, the NHL "will track statistics all the way back to the league's founding" in 1917 (NYTIMES.com, 2/21). ESPN.com's Katie Strang wrote the changes offer "legitimacy to the 'advanced statistics' community that has long vouched for such analytics as being indicative of a player's or team's success." NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, "It's not about analytics, but it gives us a common foundation, a common basis, the ability for everybody to be comparing the same things." Collins "left the door open for the league to charge for at least some elements of additional content, though it is not a part of the immediate plan" (ESPN.com, 2/20). SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL's Ian Thomas notes the site rollout followed an announcement that SAP has become "the league’s official cloud software provider" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 2/23 issue).
TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE: In Boston, Fluto Shinzawa wrote the new stats site "is affirmation that hockey is finally accepting and progressing into more efficient and insightful stats than the irrelevant plus/minus" (BOSTON GLOBE, 2/22). In Toronto, Bruce Arthur wrote the new stats page is the "first step towards a flood of data into a game so mathematically primitive that it still includes plus-minus on the front page, and doesn’t distinguish between first and second assists." There will "be a lot more data to fight over now, and a lot more data for some people to misunderstand." We "are about to learn a lot more about hockey" (TORONTO STAR, 2/21). In S.F., Ross McKeon wrote the NHL is "trying its best to merge new technology and existing data to give its fans a better experience" (S.F. CHRONICLE, 2/21).
