Since Adam W. is lurking ...

2 USCHO questions:

1) Why is INCH the ESPN.com affiliate now? Was this a financial deal? A response to the launch of USCHO magazine? INCH has better content this year than they have in the past, but I think USCHO is still the better of the two sites.

2) Why don't USCHO boxscores include the penalties? It is the first time I've seen boxscores with only the scoring.

Thanks.

1) This answer could sound like sour grapes, so I'll just say what I'm going to say, and you decide

The ESPN thing has long been fairly meaningless. I don't think either side paid attention to the fact that USCHO was an "affiliate" for at least 4 years. ESPN certainly hasn't used anything of USCHO's in at least that long, and people there now probably didn't even remember we were an affiliate. It was definitely useful at the time USCHO started - to give an appearance of legitimacy - and they did use some of our articles, and linked back to the site. We kept the logo up there long after it was useful anymore to either side because - well - who wouldn't want ESPN's logo on their site.

There was never any cash involved - and there isn't now for INCH. It a ceremonial distinction ... and they can use it and play it up for their own legitimacy. More power to them. USCHO certainly played it up for its own purposes. What it means in terms of practical usage, I really don't know. I doubt much - but we'll see.

If you want to know more about why ESPN decided to switch it - e-mail me privately ... but I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with the relative merits of the sites.


2) For most of USCHO's existence, the boxes were re-entered by hand from the various sources. Not all sources had penalties, plus entering them is laborious, and the people who enter them already were up until 4 in the morning every Friday and Saturday. The system is somewhat more automated nowadays - though the database requires an overhaul just to handle the penalties. That overhaul has actually happened, but penalties has not. It has been discussed - but for now, it's just a legacy thing.

I like to use collegehockeystats.com for stats (um, obviously) and for good box scores (since they include the penalties and also which players were on the ice for each goal); USCHO for articles, polls, schedule/results and the message board; and INCH for those silly found on a cocktail napkin things



Post Edited (11-13-03 00:30)

Collegehockeystats has all the stats, of course ... though USCHO collaborates with them to make sure the stuff it has is the same as chStats. And I like to think that on the stuff USCHO has - like the basics - that it's nicer to look at ... but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm personally not big on penalties in boxes, and never have been -- not that that's a reason why USCHO doesn't currently have them. USCHO will eventually.

I also think USCHO has a lot of great historical information thanks to its team of programmers - something I don't think others have. Poke around and you'll find a lot of stuff. The player stuff only goes back to 1998 - so use hockeydb.com for older stuff. That site is run by Ralph Slate - an RPI grad - and is a treasure trove.

And of course USCHO has PWR and KRACH (thanks to John Whalen for the latter).

INCH does a great job with its "Page 2"-like material. I wish USCHO had more of that - but apparently no one there has a good enough sense of humor

Penalties in box scores are like the PO and A columns in old baseball box scores. Cute, but only interesting when there's an anomoly (nothing like a good Pha-Box box from the 70's, with a column inch of penalties in every period ).



Post Edited (11-13-03 06:33)

Greg Berge '85 wrote:

Penalties in box scores are like the PO and A columns in old baseball box scores. Cute, but only interesting when there's an anomoly (nothing like a good Pha-Box box from the 70's, with a column inch of penalties in every period ).

I disagree. It allows you to figure out the amount of special teams time a team had, the player in the box when a pp goal was scored, etc. That stuff, like assists and "extra" goals in a high scoring game doesn't always show up in the recap.

Anyway, thanks Avash for the pointer to collegehockeystats.

I happen to think that USCHO and INCH both do a good job of covering college hockey -- two sources with different strengths are better than one.

The INCH "newsstand" feature has a tremendous amount of info every week that might otherwise be overlooked.

I'm happy to have both sites to peruse -- sure beats receiving dated newsletters/papers like back in the old days.

I know it's usually not updated until the Monday after, and I know it's generally only Cornell-related stats, and it only goes back 4 years so far, but I can at least guarantee the eLynah DB is more accurate than collegehockeystats, since that's where I got my data and corrected a fair amount of mistakes along the way. And since they were assholes to me, I'm not telling them where they are.

Oh and eLynah Mobile uses the db now, so it's current and fairly useful.



Post Edited (11-13-03 11:12)

big red apple wrote:
I disagree. It allows you to figure out the amount of special teams time a team had, the player in the box when a pp goal was scored, etc. That stuff, like assists and "extra" goals in a high scoring game doesn't always show up in the recap.

Agree. Subtleties like the Bitz goal at Yale coming seconds after a Yale power play, or the similar Vesce goal at Princeton, can easily go unnoticed. Seeing how the sequence of penalties affected the flow of the game (e.g., the first periods of Cornell at Princeton and Harvard at Dartmouth this past weekend) gives added dimension to what otherwise might seem like unexplainable swings in shots-on-goal during the course of the game.

I also like seeing who was on the ice when goals were scored--both for and against. For example, there was some satisfaction for me in seeing that friend Jessiman was either in the penalty box or on the ice for the first three goals in last year's blowout at Lynah.



Post Edited (11-13-03 11:13)

And it helps to quickly answer questions like "how many minor penalties did O'Byrne wind up taking last night?" I went to the uscho.com boxscore on Sunday and didn't find my answer. Just a few weeks ago, I went into the eLynah db to prove that Greg Hornby became more disciplined down the playoff run. I find penalty information valuable. I can't find another site where the NHL box scores don't include penalty summaries.



Post Edited (11-13-03 11:55)

Rich H '96 wrote:

And it helps to quickly answer questions like "how many minor penalties did O'Byrne wind up taking last night?"

And when was the penalty taken (e.g., the grievous one taken with three minutes to go in Buffalo).

Adam Wodon wrote:
And of course USCHO has PWR and KRACH (thanks to John Whalen for the latter).

You could thank me by spelling my name right.

The biggest problem with using collegehockeystats.com as a reference is that they don't have all the D1 games.

The INCH Newstand is a great idea. It's not that USCHO didn't think of it ... it's just that, I don't know how in the world they find the time to put that together every day ... given what I know about the manpower/monetary resources available to both INCH and USCHO.