NHL API: Get NHL Career Stats

 

Introduction

The NHL has a publicly accessible Application Programming Interface (or API) that allows users to obtain a lot of useful data (including detailed play-by-play data). There are a couple of obstacles though: 1) the NHL API does not come with a user manual; and 2) the NHL API is most easily accessed using a programming language such as R or Python. To help you overcome those obstacles I’m writing articles that provide the code (in the R programming language) for functions that pull data from the NHL API.

In this article I provide a function that pulls a skater’s NHL career stats.

The Data

Before I provide the code, here’s a sample of the data.

player_id: 8478402

player: Connor McDavid

gp: 569

toi_as: 742323

toi_es: 600275

toi_pp: 119736

toi_sh: 22312

goals: 303

assists: 547

points: 850

shots: 1948

hits: 375

blocks: 223

pim: 219

goals_es: 225

goals_pp: 71

goals_sh: 7

goals_ot: 15

assists_es: 320

assists_pp: 218

assists_sh: 9

points_pp: 289

points_sh: 16

shooting_pct: 15.6

The Code

Here’s the code for the function that pulls the above data.

# This function pulls a player's NHL career stats
# SKATERS ONLY
# REGULAR SEASON
# Time-on-ice data is returned as seconds
# Use my get_team_rosters() function to find player_ids
# Wrap this function in a loop to pull data for multiple players at the same time (see EXAMPLE on GitHub)

get_career_stats <- function(player_id) {
        
        # Get the player's full name
        
        player_site <- read_json(paste0("https://statsapi.web.nhl.com/api/v1/people/", player_id))
        player_name <- player_site$people %>%
                tibble() %>%
                unnest_wider(1)
        player_name <- player_name$fullName
        
        # Pull and organize the raw data
        
        yby_site <- read_json(paste0("https://statsapi.web.nhl.com/api/v1/people/", player_id, "/stats/?stats=yearByYear"))
        
        stats <- yby_site$stats %>%
                tibble() %>%
                unnest_wider(1) 
        stats <- stats$splits %>%
                tibble() %>%
                unnest(1) %>%
                unnest_wider(1) %>%
                unnest_wider(stat) %>%
                unnest_wider(team, names_sep = "_") %>%
                unnest_wider(league, names_sep = "_")
                
        # Add special teams assists data
        
        stats <- mutate(stats, assists_pp = powerPlayPoints - powerPlayGoals,
                        assists_sh = shortHandedPoints - shortHandedGoals)
        
        # Add even strength scoring data
        
        stats <- mutate(stats, goals_es = goals - (powerPlayGoals + shortHandedGoals), 
                        assists_es = assists - (assists_pp + assists_sh))
        
        # Clean up for time
        
        stats$timeOnIce <- ms(stats$timeOnIce, quiet = TRUE)
        stats$timeOnIce <- period_to_seconds(stats$timeOnIce)
        stats$evenTimeOnIce <- ms(stats$evenTimeOnIce, quiet = TRUE)
        stats$evenTimeOnIce <- period_to_seconds(stats$evenTimeOnIce)
        stats$powerPlayTimeOnIce <- ms(stats$powerPlayTimeOnIce, quiet = TRUE)
        stats$powerPlayTimeOnIce <- period_to_seconds(stats$powerPlayTimeOnIce)
        stats$shortHandedTimeOnIce <- ms(stats$shortHandedTimeOnIce, quiet = TRUE)
        stats$shortHandedTimeOnIce <- period_to_seconds(stats$shortHandedTimeOnIce)
        
        # Filter for only NHL data
        
        stats <- filter(stats, league_id == 133)
        
        # Sum the data for each stat
        
        stats <- summarise(stats, gp = sum(games),
                           toi_as = sum(timeOnIce),
                           toi_es = sum(evenTimeOnIce),
                           toi_pp = sum(powerPlayTimeOnIce),
                           toi_sh = sum(shortHandedTimeOnIce),
                           goals = sum(goals),
                           assists = sum(assists),
                           points = sum(points),
                           shots = sum(shots),
                           hits = sum(hits),
                           blocks = sum(blocked),
                           pim = sum(pim),
                           goals_es = sum(goals_es),
                           goals_pp = sum(powerPlayGoals),
                           goals_sh = sum(shortHandedGoals),
                           goals_ot = sum(overTimeGoals),
                           assists_es = sum(assists_es),
                           assists_pp = sum(assists_pp),
                           assists_sh = sum(assists_sh),
                           points_pp = sum(powerPlayPoints),
                           points_sh = sum(shortHandedPoints))
        
        # Add career shooting percentage
        
        stats <- mutate(stats, shooting_pct = round((goals / shots) * 100, 1))
        
        # Add player data
        
        stats <- mutate(stats, player_id = player_id,
                        player = player_name) 
        
        # Rearrange the data to be returned by the function
        
        stats <- select(stats, c(23:24,1:22))

        return(stats)
}

Get It On GitHub

I’ve created a public repository on GitHub where I’ll be sharing my functions for accessing the NHL’s API. You can go to the repository by clicking here.

The End Of The Article

That’s the end of this article. Follow me on twitter to be notified about new content.

Cheers,

Mark (18 Skaters)