When it came to the National Hockey League’s new advanced stats site, a few things did not compute for Travis Yost.

OK, more than a few things.

“There is no reason to go to NHL.com for anything related to hockey statistics. Their numbers are inaccurate. If not inaccurate, they are misleading. If not inaccurate or misleading, they aren’t capturing what they believe they are capturing,” wrote Yost, an analytics writer for TSN and co-host of the PDOcast, an analytics heavy podcast.

Yost’s screed against the NHL.com advanced stats site went viral, echoing and summarizing the concerns from many hockey fans about the League’s approach to analytics and its partnership with SAP, which was announced with much fanfare in February.

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That's when they added an “enhanced stats” section added to NHL.com, that featured metrics on puck possession and zone starts. But the partnership was widely criticized by the advanced stats community, from the League’s decision to do away with traditional stat names like “Corsi” to some specious boasts from SAP about its number crunching – as Yost notes, there was a “comical” claim that “they had built a predictive model that could accurately select 85% of post-season winners.”

Quietly, references to that model have been scuttled.

“The NHL should terminate their partnership and find someone who actually cares about the work they are doing. And the SAP should find more big business to sink their teeth into before the well dries up. Monorail sales have never been better,” Yost wrote.

Ouch.

In an interview with Puck Daddy on Monday, Yost didn’t mince words on NHL.com’s advanced stats site.

“As for right now, no, they are not a good source. In fact they are the worst hockey stats source I can ever recall, and it's not particularly close. There are data integrity issues everywhere. They don't seem to know what they are scraping. They don't seem to know what is and isn't relevant. The visualization is atrocious. They add no value at present time. And sadly they are getting precisely zero help from their business partner in SAP in all of this, who should know better,” he said.

Chris Foster felt the burn of Yost’s critique all way up in the NHL’s front office.

“The first couple of points, those were great. Fantastic feedback. But the rest of the criticisms … I felt he was trying to pile on and paint the entire site as problematic, when he found a couple of issues that were corrected quickly,” said Foster, the NHL’s director of digital media.

“I would call that a very large generalization not based on truth. It’s not an accurate assessment of the site.”

Between Yost’s screed and Foster’s defense we find some common ground: There were some basic issues with the NHL’s fancy new stats site, and it was that criticism that prompted their correction.

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Problem No. 1: Goalies On The Kill

Yost noted that, according to NHL.com’s stats, 17 goalies had not given up a goal on the penalty kill. Which is frankly impossible, given the stats for the League’s power play efficiency.

This was a valid concern and an easy fix. “We basically had the drop down menu backwards,” said John Dellapina of the NHL. “We had the menu labeled as ‘shorthanded’ when facing shorthanded shots.”

The NHL now has a save a goalie makes while his team is shorthanded properly labeled.

Problem No. 2: NHL’s stats database currently features completely inaccurate/randomly generated numbers for team-level shot statistics.

Yost ran a chart that showed the wild disparity between the NHL’s numbers detailing Corsi-For (shots on goal, missed, or blocked) per 60 minutes of even strength time:

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