Over the weekend of February 8-9, 2020, the Columbus Blue Jackets hosted their Hockey Analytics Conference (CBJHAC). Organised by Alison Lukan (@AlisonL) of The Athletic, the conference gave an in-depth look into the current state of the art in hockey analytics.

I was very fortunate to be able to attend with a million thanks to Peter Flynn’s (@pflynnhockey) hockey diversity initiative that he setup via hockey-graphs.com. I had the opportunity to share my approach to creating data visualisations using hockey stats, and here are my slides:

In my talk, I wanted to share how data visualisation can be a great way to get into hockey statistics for any skill level. The main takeaways were:

Know the data you’re working with Use any and all tools available Ask and answer the questions important to you Make your visualisation compelling

Using this process, I provided the thought process into making my NHL Point Share Shells, which I’ve written about before here: Visualising team scoring across the NHL halfway through the 2019-20 season.

The video to my presentation can be found here. The rest of the conference included many great presentations and discussions as well, which can be found on the same YouTube channel:

Thanks again to Alison, Peter, the Columbus Blue Jackets, and everyone else involved for putting on such a great event!