PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY SERVER

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

A quick run-down of common questions about this server

1. How often are the game scores and player statistics updated?

The player stats are usually updated only after the NHL games have been completed on the previous evening, which means by about 7:00 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time the next morning, or 12 noon Eastern Standard Time. The game scores and team stats are always on the server 8 hours before then. Of course, there will be exceptions to the rule if I have to observe on Mauna Kea, or if I go to Honolulu over a weekend, or if I take a 2-week Christmas vacation (not this year at least!), so please don't expect updates on every single day of the 2002-03 NHL season. There are other things in life besides maintaining hockey statistics. In fact, I am an extremely busy individual. I teach physics and astronomy classes 6 hours a week, maintain a research program on spectroscopy and photometry of variable stars, manage a large education/research grant, sit on a division personnel committee as well as an outreach committee, serve as a member of the Board of Directors of a local networking organization, play clarinet in the Hawaii County Band 30 hours a month, regularly sing in the UH Hilo Chorus as well as practice piano, and support a young family of four.

2. In your Individual Player Statistics file (called scorerstat03.html) and in your Leading Scorers file (called regscore03.html), why are the Games Played (GP) sometimes for the teams and sometimes for individual players?

The scoring data is entered at the keyboard using a Fortran program (SCORESTATS) and then I run another Fortran program (BATSEARCH) which checks for consistency with the information available in the newspaper box scores. SCORESTATS simply puts in the number of games played by the respective teams rather than for individual players. BATSEARCH takes 180 minutes to execute, but when it is completed, both regscore03.html and scorerstat03.html are updated and list GP for individual players, not teams. The latter file will then also include Shots, Game-Winning Goals, and +/- statistics for individual players. The updated files should usually be available after 7:00 a.m. Hawaii Standard Time. So if you try and download the player statistics files before about 12 noon Eastern Standard Time, you will get the scoring stats only with GP for the teams, and without Shots or +/- totals. At the moment, there are 0 games for which I don't have player stats. This means that the GP, Shots, and +/- columns are accurate (but see 3.). Unfortunately, individual player statistics are not always available for every single game. This was a problem during the 1994-95 season. As the season progresses and more games are played, however, the loss of data from "missing" games will be less and less important compared to the totals.

3. Why are there occasionally inconsistencies between your statistics and other sources of hockey information on the Internet? Which source is "right"?

There is no really no "right" source until the season is over. So please don't ask me to change anything because it doesn't agree with the official NHL stats! In fact, the official goal and assist totals are sometimes adjusted 2 weeks later. I don't have any way to verify on a daily basis what the official NHL stats are, since they are always in a state of flux until the end of the season is reached. There is pretty well no hockey news available here in Hawaii except in USA Today. Thus, the statistics are as accurate as the box scores, and internally consistent. I do make corrections to the goal totals if there are changes, because BATSEARCH will ferret out this information after the box scores are reviewed. Although there may be some inconsistencies between my assist totals and those listed on other Web sites, there is no doubt that my totals are consistent with the box scores.

4. Is there any way to download the files I need by logging in from a remote station?

Absolutely not! HUBBLE is not set up as an ftp server and never will be. It is also protected against remote telnet and ftp commands. Moreover, I will not E-mail statistics files to people over the Internet because it is too time-consuming.

Any other intelligent questions? If so, click here and I'll try to answer you...

Richard Crowe (rcrowe@hubble.uhh.hawaii.edu)