About
About the Site
First of all, I’d just like to say thank you for visiting lb-hockey.com, hours upon hours of work have been put into making it a reality and I’m so happy that you all get to experience it. For those who may be lost and unsure where to begin, I’ll follow with a little guide. The Home page has links to every visualization on the site. They each come with a glossary to explain their distinct layout, features, and data. The multi-year player cards explainer should be read first since these serve as the basis on which the other dashboards are built. In terms of getting access to the products, the Register page provides a couple quick paragraphs on how the sharing & using of all the LB-Hockey tools works. If you have any further questions, feel free to either message the LB-Hockey account on BlueSky or Instagram (links in the footer), or to email lbhockey.social@gmail.com.
About the Data
As I’ve mentioned in the multi-year cards glossary, none of this would be possible without the sources from which I collect my data:
– Corey Sznajder’s AllThreeZones Project
(https://www.allthreezones.com, @allthreezones.bsky.social on BlueSky)
– MoneyPuck
(https://moneypuck.com, @moneypuck.bsky.social on BlueSky)
– TheStanleyCap
(https://thestanleycap.com, @thestanleycap.com on BlueSky)
– NHL.com
MoneyPuck hosts a ton of easily available downloads dating back to the start of the NHL’s analytics era in 2007. They also provide flurry-adjusted expected goals on top of many visualizations of their own including the deserve-to-win-o’meter and playoff odds chart. TheStanleyCap is one of the leading sources for salary cap data. They offer a clean look into player contract history and team cap situations with a great level of precision and polish. Corey dedicates countless hours every year to manually track hundreds of games for his AllThreeZones Project. The resulting microstats provide exceptional data that all the tools on this site would lose tons of depth without. He truly gives the population access to insight that isn’t available anywhere else in the hockey analytics public sphere.
Overall, if there’s one thing you should take away from this site, it’s how absolutely indispensable these people are to the hockey analytics community, and I’d highly recommend supporting them if you are able.
The Noun Project (https://thenounproject.com) is also a tremendously helpful resource for this project. Their “unlimited individual” subscription gave me access to a large library of icons from various talented volunteer artists which were instrumental in the badge design process. The specific used assets are noted at the following page.
About Me
I’ve always been a massive hockey fan. Nearly everything I did throughout my childhood was hockey-related: whether it was playing, watching, or reading. And to be completely honest, none of that has changed nowadays. Growing up in Canada’s capital, I have always been obsessed with all things “Ottawa hockey”: from the Sens, to the 67s, and now the Charge as well. Even at a very young age, I would note down the stat lines of my favourite players in the yearly HOCKEY SUPERSTARS books.
So it’s no surprise that I would continue to develop a fascination with hockey analytics as time went on. From there on out, I had the privilege to work as a hockey analytics consultant in the NHL for a few years. Between that and my honours degree in statistics/data science at uOttawa, I was inspired to create visualizations that could truly harness the possibilities of modern day hockey analytics.
I could never have believed that what initially started as a personal project to better evaluate NHLers’ playing styles would grow to become this. So I want to thank everyone who tolerated my endless questions and let me bounce ideas off of them. From my mom & dad, to my friends, social media mutuals, and co-workers, thank you so very much for all the support and time you have provided over the past couple years that has helped this become a reality. 😊
