I was recently sent a spreadsheet containing information on every NLL game ever played, from 1987 to 2011. For each game, it contains the date/time, home and away teams, final score, attendance, and what type of game (i.e. regular season, division finals, championship, All-Star game, etc.). For a numbers geek like me, this is heaven. I immediately imported the data into a SQL Anywhere database and started to write stored procedures and web services to aggregate and analyze the data.
Thanks very much to NLL Chatter reader Dennis for sending this to me, and props for all the work it took putting it together!
Over the next little while (probably more in the off season), I will be posting articles summarizing and analyzing certain aspects of this data. For example: which team has the best record in Friday night games? What about Saturday away games when they also had a Friday home game the night before? What about Saturday afternoons on artificial turf against a lefty starter when the roof is closed? Oh wait, sorry, wrong sport.
If you have particular requests or interests, please leave a comment here or send me an email and I’ll see what I can do.
Just to whet your appetite for the types of information I can get from this data, here are some random pieces. Note again that these numbers do not include the current (2012) season.
| Record | Value | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Best regular season winning percentage | .714 | New Jersey Saints, 10-4 in 2 seasons |
| Best playoff winning percentage | .833 | Washington Stealth, 5-1 in 2 seasons |
| Worst regular season winning percentage | .000 | Charlotte Cobras, 0-8 in 1 season |
| Worst playoff winning percentage (ignoring teams that never made the playoffs) | .000 | Minnesota Swarm, 0-5 Boston Blazers, 0-3 Vancouver Ravens, 0-2 New England Blazers, 0-1 |
| Highest game attendance | 19,432 | Arizona 13 @ Toronto 19, May 14 2005 (Championship game) Important note: I was at this game. |
| Lowest game attendance | 1,437 | Edmonton 6 @ San Jose 14, April 13 2008 |
| Best overtime record (>5 games) |
.684 | Colorado Mammoth, 13-6 |
| Worst overtime record (>5 games) |
.222 | Boston Blazers, 2-7 |
| Highest scoring game | 32-17 | Montreal 32 @ Calgary 17, Nov 23 2002 |
| Lowest scoring game | 7-4 | Albany 4 @ Toronto 7, Jan 11 2001 Important note: I was at this game. |
| Biggest goal differential | 22 | Buffalo 28 @ Charlotte 6, Feb 24 1996 |
| Fewest goals, one team | 2 | Philadelphia 2 @ Toronto 13, Apr 16 1999 (Semi-finals) |
| Most goals, losing team | 22 | Buffalo 23 @ Washington Power 22, Mar 23 2002 |
| Highest average goals/game | 15.9 | Washington Power (3 seasons) |
| Lowest average goals/game | 8.5 | Charlotte Cobras (1 season) |
| Highest average goals against/game | 18.6 | Charlotte Cobras (1 season) |
| Lowest average goals against/game | 9.6 | Orlando Titans (1 season) |
Now, if you have a spreadsheet containing every goal from every game, who scored it, who got assists, what quarter it was scored in, and whether it was a power play; shorthanded; empty-net; or penalty shot, and you feel like sending it to me, that would be perfect.
P.S. Yes, I stole the title of this article from John Hodgman’s second book.
NLL Chatter 