Analyzing Hockey Through the Big Data and Analytics lens
                     ANALYZING HOCKEY 
THROUGH THE BIG DATA 
AND ANALYTICS LENS
https://datasportsgroup.com/
Professional sports have been taking advantage of analytics ever since 
Moneyball revolutionized the entire sports industry with sabermetrics. The 
statistical tracking truly hit the mainstream with Oakland A’s performance, 
which was made possible with manual tracking, and the database is generated. 
Baseball might have been the first sport to use data analytics but soccer and 
basketball and others were not far off and used data tracking tech for decision 
making and even evolved their process through the years from manual tracking 
to automated data tracking to have a seamless system in place.
The applicability of data analytics in other sports like hockey may have seemed 
limited at first but it has blown up as well. When we discuss hockey, less popular 
sport compared to cricket or soccer, but the sport has its own fanatics. In the 
world of hockey for the ones who are unfamiliar with it, players are known to 
skate at a speed up to 35 MPH and the puck even flies up to 100 MPH.
To the unenlightened, the game can have all the earmarks of being too turbulent. 
In any case, while groups started applying new norms of cutting-edge advanced 
statistics in the previous ten years, the combination of innovation and technology 
is going to make a huge impact on the NHL.
For as long as a decade, the NHL has utilized a group of analysts called the 
Hockey Information Tracking System to log things like a player's experience on 
ice, go head-to-head wins, and other details. The watchword here is a group — 
stats were followed physically on a proprietary data entry app by various 
individuals throughout the period. NHL has even deployed an automated data 
tracking tech which was being developed for quite a long time and was first 
openly given a chance during the 2019 NHL All-Star Game in San Jose.
Extraordinarily manufactured pucks 
containing tracking chips, and such devices 
were also put into players’ shoulder braces. 
Joined with a number of sensors put 
around the arena, unexpectedly the world's 
quickest sport has enormous information 
being gathered during each snapshot of the 
game: position, speed, bearing, distance, 
and other key measurements. Which was a 
true challenge in the sports.
The big data was thus generated with numerous data points generated at about 
200 times per second, even more, data points were collected for five skaters and 
the goalie of each team participating in the league, and the match lasted for 
about 60 minutes. Now that is a lot of data! If we look at the numbers in the one-
hour match roughly 9,360,000 logged events for a category were created in an 
NHL game.
NHL’s ability to create such raw data is a big deal in itself but with the 
technological development and emergence of artificial intelligence the data was 
analyzed and valuable insights were drawn as well. The process of data 
collection was further streamlined with the use of AI models that helped reduce 
the human error and bias which was prominent with manual tracking and build 
a more robust model.
Hockey Analytics is a whole new ball game
With analytics player tracking is made a 
real possibility as well as with such a 
massive amount of data, the team’s 
statisticians and data scientists can come 
up with innovative ways to develop 
strategICE hockey stats apiies. Data 
Analytics could be used to bag free agent 
gems and improve the roster performance 
it all boils down to how the data is being 
utilized to get results. The same has been 
possible with field hockey XML data.
Data might primarily be used to improve performance but it's one other use 
that has created a new revenue stream for the clubs from licensing the data and 
offering that to broadcasts. Gambling sites are also improving their bottom line 
by using the same data.
The scope of the big data revolution in the sports industry is still not entirely 
realized presently. There is a lot of potential and an endless amount of 
innovation and revenue stream data could unfold. And companies like 
Data Sports Group as a sports data provider are taking an active role in 
revolutionizing the sports industry and facilitating many companies to do the 
same. Even in sports like Hockey, Big Data and Analytics have played a 
significant role in the advancement of sports.
Data Sports Group offers a comprehensive set of databases from pre-match stats 
about the teams and players’ performance, to a live sports feed that engages the 
fans and post-match analysis with team standings.  hockey stats API, ice hockey 
XML data could be used to pull specific data into your platform and with widgets, 
fan engagement could be achieved. What are you waiting for get in touch with the 
team today!
CONTACT US
Emai [email protected]
Phone - +1 (704) 964-6859
Address - 2600 Kinmere Dr
City – Gastonia
State - North Carolina
PIN – 28056
Country - USA