The look...of stats

OK, the Caps lost. Boo-freakin’-hoo. You don’t like to see losing become a habit -- we've had enough of that the last several years -- but it isn’t anything to get all in a knot about either. But now that we’re playing games, let’s bring my pal Dougie in to talk about something really important…

Dougie, what do you think about the new statistics displays on NHL.com

“They suck.”

Isn’t that a bit harsh?

“Yeah, yeah....but have you seen them? Take a look at the box score. 5v5 5v4 5v3 DN/SH AN/PP…it looks like the ticker from hell.”

But they are providing a much richer set of data.

“That they are, and we appreciate that. But visually, my eyes hurt. It looks like someone barfed up a grayscale Rubik’s Cube.”

What do you mean?

“Look, ‘box scores’ should be simple. They’re not a place to cram every slice of data you can think of.”

You mean like baseball box scores?

“Well, yeah…look at the box score on MLB.com”…nice and clean, except for that jibberish at the bottom that they could set side-to-side like they do everything else.”

So, what would you do to improve it?

“Well, let’s start right at the top…that scoring summary. Replace it with the period summary..first period, second period, third period, overtime, shootout, goals, shots. Just like the inning display in the baseball box score. Then that scoring summary?...they could break it apart into the team columns, side-by-side…”

But you’d lose that scoring sequence you get with the NHL display…

“No, you wouldn’t…here’s how it might look…go ahead, click on it…”




Well, it’s something to think about. What about the rest of the box score and the “Super Stats?”

“Hey, don’t you have prognostications to work on…”

OK, OK…we’ll talk about that another time…