(Author’s Note: although it is fashionable in technology marketing circles to refer to a powerful technology solution as “x on steroids,” despite a strong desire to do so, we are not going to use that phrase here, simply because the technology solution is, in fact, about hockey. We dislike steroids. If you want to use the phrase, by all means, have at it.)
“The scorekeepers at the Boston Garden in the late-70s and 80s had a reputation for under counting the shots against Boston (as well as inflating the B’s shots for). The totals would make the team look better, but would end up making the goalies save percentages look worse.”—post from user “reckoning,” hockeysfuture.com.
Across all sports, keeping stats is a largely thankless job. Whether its snarky online comments like the one above in hockey, or an angry third baseman calling the media room to contest an eror he’s almost certain he didn’t make, it’s hard work, not fun, open to complaints from fans and players alike and above all, doesn’t pay well. And in this day of social media, any missteps spread, quickly.
Hockey is one of the more complex of the major professional sports to score, and one that’s impossible to fans to tabulate. While there is romance in bringing your baseball scorecard and pencil to the park, we can’t imagine many people stop at the souvenir stand at an NHL arena to purchase a chart to tabulate penalty minutes and +/- of their favorite players. Leave that to the professionals.
For the professionals, it’s certainly a challenge. Technology has evolved over time to make it easier, but most solutions have limitations. They may be powerful enough for, say, youth or Tuesday-night beer leagues, but lack the capabilities required for high-junior and professional leagues. And ones purpose-built for leagues are pricey, require league-specific customization or are even home-grown creations.
Among these solutions is HockeyTech’s LeagueStat, an advance offering for scoring games and sharing it seamlessly with scouting software and team/league websites. It is already in exclusive use by the best-known minor and junior leagues—the AHL, CHL, USHL and ECHL. It takes the laborious task of keeping stats by hand—including more challenging ones like time on ice, +/- and the like—and creates an automated workflow making scoring information available live, in-game on our secure portal as well as mobile devices.
The user experience is specifically tailored to your league’s requirements for penalties, goals, OTs, shootouts, shots, hits, etc. Pretty intense, right?
But hang on: in the words of 2 Unlimited, “Get ready for this!”
HockeyTech has developed technology that takes LeagueStat to new, exciting places. And we swear, it was done naturally, with no banned substances.
LeagueStat can accept data from player-tracking systems—such as HockeyTech’s solutions for game events and metrics (puck/player tracking, possession time, velocity, shots, goals, assists, etc.) and merge it into its platform and much more.
Technology That Accurately Captures the Work of 3-5 People
With our tracking system enabled, the scorekeeper no longer needs the 3-5 people that would keep track of this information manually. Each player wears a small RFID tag, and locators (about the size of an American Sacajawea dollar coin or a Canadian “toonie” $2 coin) in the beams above the ice receive signals that automatically track this information in HockeyTech’s game events and metrics and enters it seamlessly into LeagueStat.
Together, this is the single most comprehensive source of in-game, player-specific statistics and information. This information can also be integrated into our FASTHockey streaming video—so coaches and scouts can jump directly to certain points in the game based on information in LeagueStat.
HockeyTech has tested the combined solutions with two teams and plans to do so with seven additional ones next season. The future of hockey statistics is here, today – without steroids, and without those highly dubious Boston Garden scorers in the 1970s and 1980s.
Written by, Marc DeRochie – Product Manager