Sports Reference Blog

Introducing the Hockey-Reference Goal Finder

Posted by Alex Bonilla on October 30, 2018

Hockey-Reference's Play Index already has a variety of tools at your disposal, such as our Game Finders, our Advanced Stats Finders and our Player Comparison Finder. We have now added a Player Goal Finder to our Play Index section.

The Goal Finder can search through goals scored with a wide selection of filters for analysis. Some examples of how the goals can be searched include home or away, even strength, power play or short-handed, and unassisted or assisted. You can also specify searches limited to a franchise, to an individual scorer, and to an individual goalie.

For example, let's say you want all Alex Ovechkin regular season goals scored on Cam Ward. The ensuing result will show each of those goals, when in the game it was scored, what the game situation was and the players who assisted if applicable.

The Goal Finder also works for searching for total goals in a certain situation. For example, if you were interested in Roberto Luongo and who scored the most playoff goals on him during his career, the Goal Finder will find that for you. (Spoiler alert: Blackhawks occupy the top two spots.)

You can also search specifically for go-ahead or game-tying goals. No surprise to hockey fans that Claude Lemieux, an ordinary regular-season performer, is tied for the most go-ahead playoff goals in the 3rd Period or OT.

You can also search for goals by time. Mark Messier's 13 goals in the opening minute of play are the most. Wayne Gretzky's 70 goals in the final minute of the 3rd period are the most. But only two of The Great One's goals in the final minute of the 3rd put his team in the lead. Mark Recchi has the most of those, with 5.

And just for fun, the most frivolous search possible: Wayne Gretzky has the record with 10 goals scored on his birthday.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Related posts:

  1. What the Heck is Corsi? A Primer on Advanced Hockey Statistics
  2. Your 2015-16 Expected +/- Leader: Joe Thornton
  3. Player Comparison Finder Added to Hockey Reference
  4. The 2017 Hall of Fame Ballot, Part 3
  5. Introducing NHL Expected +/-

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2018 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Announcement, Features, Hockey-Reference.com, Play Index. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Introducing the Hockey-Reference Goal Finder”

  1. Joe Says: October 30th, 2018 at 5:33 pm

    This is great news for hockey fans!!! Thank you for this feature. Since this is a hockey post, it is a good opportunity to ask "The Question That Must Be Ignored"... Will the goal finder be taken down after a few days, like the game logs? Oh, and since no one else has been asking this for the past six months, why were the game logs removed? :)

  2. Biz Says: October 31st, 2018 at 3:24 pm

    Looks great! Same question as Joe: The pre 87-88 game logs? Will they ever return? It seems like this is pulling data from game logs from the 79-80 season and up, so maybe this is just a tease for something bigger? One (or many) can wish!

  3. Claude Paradis Says: November 7th, 2018 at 8:09 pm

    This is lots of fun to play with and kill time... Almost as much as the pre 1987 game logs were!

    Some data seems to miss from 1979-80... I just queried all goals from Michel Goulet and Wayne Gretzky and both miss a goal from that season. For instance, Goulet's missing one is from Dec 15 game in Detroit. Gretky's numbers don't have the one he scored on Nov 7 in Detroit (is there a pattern here?)

    I also hope the 1987 game logs come back. Any development about that?