Getting Started with fastRhockey
Ben Howell,
Saiem Gilani
Source: vignettes/introduction.Rmd
introduction.RmdfastRhockey
is an R package for accessing hockey data via public web APIs: the
PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League), the
NHL (National Hockey League), the AHL and the three
Canadian major-junior leagues (OHL, WHL, QMJHL), thirteen European
leagues, and NCAA men’s and women’s college hockey through ESPN. It
provides structured data frames of play-by-play, schedule, standings,
roster, draft, player stats, and team data. The package also includes
integrated expected goals (xG) models for NHL data.
Part of the SportsDataverse family of R/Python packages for sports analytics.
Installation
You can install the CRAN version of fastRhockey
with:
install.packages("fastRhockey")You can install the development version from GitHub with:
if (!requireNamespace('pak', quietly = TRUE)){
install.packages('pak')
}
pak::pak("sportsdataverse/fastRhockey")PWHL Data
The PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) launched in January
2024 with six teams (Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa and
Toronto) and added Seattle and Vancouver for 2025-26.
fastRhockey provides full access to PWHL schedules,
standings, play-by-play, player box scores, team rosters, and stat
leaders.
Schedule
Let’s pull the 2024 PWHL season schedule:
schedule <- pwhl_schedule(season = 2024)
schedule %>%
dplyr::filter(game_status == "Final") %>%
dplyr::select(game_id, game_date, home_team, away_team,
home_score, away_score, winner, venue) %>%
head(10)The schedule returns game IDs, dates, teams, scores, and venue information for every game in the season.
Standings
pwhl_standings(season = 2024) %>%
dplyr::select(team_rank, team, games_played, points,
wins, losses, goals_for, goals_against)Player Box Scores
Pick a game from the schedule and pull individual player stats.
pwhl_player_box() returns a list with two data frames:
skaters and goalies.
box <- pwhl_player_box(game_id = 27)
# Skater stats
box[[1]] %>%
dplyr::select(first_name, last_name, position, team_id,
goals, assists, points, shots, toi) %>%
dplyr::arrange(dplyr::desc(points)) %>%
head(10)
# Goalie stats
box[[2]] %>%
dplyr::select(first_name, last_name, team_id,
saves, goals_against, shots_against, toi)Play-by-Play
The real power of fastRhockey is in the play-by-play
data. pwhl_pbp() returns detailed event-level data
including shot locations, faceoff results, penalties, goals with assist
information, and plus/minus player tracking.
pbp <- pwhl_pbp(game_id = 27)
pbp %>%
dplyr::select(event, team_id, period_of_game, time_of_period,
player_name_first, player_name_last,
x_coord, y_coord) %>%
head(15)The play-by-play data includes 90+ columns with event details, player information, coordinates (raw and transformed), and game context.
Stat Leaders
Pull league-wide goalie or skater stats:
# Goalie stats
pwhl_stats(position = "goalie", season = 2024) %>%
dplyr::select(player_name, team, games_played,
goals_against_avg, save_percentage, shutouts) %>%
head(10)
# Skater stats (all teams)
pwhl_stats(position = "skater", season = 2024) %>%
dplyr::select(player_name, team, games_played,
goals, assists, points) %>%
head(10)NHL Data
fastRhockey also provides extensive access to NHL data
via the api-web.nhle.com and
api.nhle.com/stats APIs.
Schedule
nhl_schedule(season = "20242025") %>%
head(10)Standings
nhl_standings(season = "20242025") %>%
head(10)Game Feed and Play-by-Play
The nhl_game_feed() function returns detailed game data
including play-by-play, rosters, and game information.
nhl_game_pbp() provides play-by-play with shift data
integrated.
feed <- nhl_game_feed(game_id = 2024020001)
dplyr::glimpse(feed)Player Stats
# Skater season stats
nhl_stats_skaters(season = "20242025") %>%
head(10)Draft Data
# Get 2024 draft picks (round 1)
nhl_draft_year(year = 2024, round = 1)Full Season Loaders
For bulk historical data, use the loader functions, which read
pre-built season files from the sportsdataverse-data
releases instead of calling the APIs. There are 23 NHL loaders
(load_nhl_*(), from 2010) and 17 PWHL loaders
(load_pwhl_*(), from 2024), plus aliases named to match
sportsdataverse-py:
# Full season of play-by-play
pbp <- load_nhl_pbp(seasons = 2024)
# Full season schedule
sched <- load_nhl_schedule(seasons = 2024)
# Full season rosters
rosters <- load_nhl_rosters(seasons = 2024)Plotting shots on a rink
sportyR
draws regulation rinks as ggplot2 layers. The PWHL
play-by-play’s x_coord_fixed / y_coord_fixed
columns (the AHL, OHL, WHL and QMJHL *_pbp() functions
return the same ones) are in feet from centre ice with the home team
shooting right, which is the frame
sportyR::geom_hockey("pwhl") draws. Neither
sportyR nor ggplot2 is a
fastRhockey dependency, so install them first
(install.packages(c("sportyR", "ggplot2"))). For team logos
and colours, see sdvplotR.
library(ggplot2)
pwhl_shots <- load_pwhl_pbp(seasons = 2025) %>%
dplyr::filter(event %in% c("shot", "goal"),
!is.na(x_coord_fixed), !is.na(y_coord_fixed))
sportyR::geom_hockey("pwhl") +
geom_point(
data = pwhl_shots,
aes(x = x_coord_fixed, y = y_coord_fixed, colour = event == "goal"),
alpha = 0.3, size = 0.8
) +
scale_colour_manual(values = c(`FALSE` = "grey40", `TRUE` = "red"),
labels = c("Shot", "Goal"), name = NULL)More leagues
The same calling style covers the other families. Each links to its section of the function reference.
ESPN and Fox Sports NHL
espn_nhl_*()
(126 functions) read ESPN’s NHL API and fox_nhl_*()
(8 functions) read Fox Sports’ Bifrost API.
espn_nhl_scoreboard(dates = 20250301)
espn_nhl_pbp(game_id = "401688263")
fox_nhl_standings(team_id = "1")AHL, OHL, WHL and QMJHL
The AHL,
OHL,
WHL
and QMJHL
run on the same HockeyTech feed as the PWHL, so each league has the same
12 functions (<league>_schedule(),
<league>_pbp(),
<league>_standings(), …).
ahl_schedule(season = 2026)
ohl_standings(season = 2026)European leagues
Thirteen European
leagues (211 functions): DEL (del_*), ICE Hockey League
(icehl_*), EIHL (eihl_*), Metal Ligaen
(metal_*), KHL (khl_*), VHL
(vhl_*), SHL (shl_*), HockeyAllsvenskan
(ha_*), Liiga (liiga_*), the Swiss federation
(sihf_*) and National League (nl_*), the Czech
Extraliga (elh_*) and Ligue Magnus (magnus_*).
Seasons are end years (2026 = 2025-26). Requests to one host are spaced
at least a second apart, and a failed request raises a classed condition
(fastRhockey_no_data, fastRhockey_asset_fetch
or fastRhockey_bad_request, all inheriting
fastRhockey_error) that you can catch with
tryCatch().
liiga_schedule(season = 2026)
tryCatch(
khl_standings(season = 2026),
fastRhockey_error = function(e) message("KHL request failed: ", conditionMessage(e))
)NCAA college hockey
ESPN’s men’s (espn_mch_*())
and women’s (espn_wch_*())
college hockey wrappers, 121 per league, mirror the ESPN NHL family.
espn_mch_scoreboard(dates = 20250301)
espn_wch_standings()Deprecated PHF Functions
The Premier Hockey Federation (PHF), formerly the National Women’s
Hockey League (NWHL), ceased operations prior to the formation of the
PWHL. All phf_* and load_phf_* functions have
been defunct since v1.0.0 and stop with an error when called. Use the
pwhl_* functions instead for women’s professional hockey
data.
Citations
To cite the fastRhockey
R package in publications, use:
BibTeX Citation
@misc{howell_gilani_fastRhockey,
author = {Ben Howell and Saiem Gilani},
title = {fastRhockey: Functions to Access Professional Women's Hockey League and National Hockey League Play by Play Data.},
url = {https://fastRhockey.sportsdataverse.org/},
doi = {10.32614/CRAN.package.fastRhockey},
year = {2026}
}