In the last 10 years, I have been impressed by the development of the hockey analytics community in North America as well as the tools made available to the public in the hope of increasing the general hockey knowledge.

Unfortunately, in Switzerland, the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation (SIHF) does not provide the same level of information as there is in North America and keeps part of its proprietary data for itself. As such, fans and journalists, except on very rare occasions, don’t have access to the same kind of in-depth researches/analyses as there are in the NHL or some other European leagues. Plus/minus is still THE hockey statistic for some journalists or analysts.

The first part of my project with the Hockey-Graphs Mentorship program was to create a platform entirely dedicated to Swiss hockey statistics, called NL Ice Data, the main goal was to exploit as much as possible the available data and to give fans access to additional statistics the SIHF doesn’t necessarily provide:

GF/GA: for players, RelGF%, GF/60, …;

time on ice deployment and evolution;

linemates information;

aggregated shot tracker maps per player, goalie and team;

and many others.

Current features include the same core of statistics for players, goalkeepers and teams: statistics, fouls, shootouts and shot tracker maps. Easy to use, the website provides interactive tables and charts so that fans can engage more with data. Additional features, charts and metrics will be added along the project.

By slowly integrating further metrics and concepts after the website’s launch (xG or Game Score for example), the modest goal is to build overall knowledge amongst fans. A secondary goal was to have a platform ready to publish more *advanced* statistics (including at the player level) as soon as the League publishes more of its proprietary data.