Pavel Bure's ice time in 2000-01 season

[overpass]

I'm pretty sure the ice time stats for Pavel Bure's 2000-01 have changed, on both nhl.com and hockey-reference, at some point in the past few years. And I think the current stats are wrong.

Has anyone else noticed this issue with any players?

Recently I saw that nhl.com and hockey-reference both have Bure with an average time on ice of 23:14 for the 2000-01 season. But I swear I remember his average TOI for that season was displayed as 26:52 in the past. Here's a link to an old HF post that gives the same number, so I'm not just imagining things.

Here's Bure's 2000-01 game log from hockey-reference. Just looking through here, I see his median TOI was 24:32, well above the average of 23:14. Here's a breakdown of listed his TOI/game, so you can see how it's a skewed distribution.

29-30 TOI: 3
28-29 TOI: 7
27-28 TOI: 6
26-27 TOI: 10
25-26 TOI: 12
24-25 TOI: 6
23-24 TOI: 8
22-23 TOI: 5
21-22 TOI: 2
20-21 TOI: 2
19-20 TOI: 1
18-19 TOI: 5
17-18 TOI: 1
16-17 TOI: 6
15-16 TOI: 8

The part in green looks like a normal distribution centred around 25 or 26 TOI per game, tapering off around 30 TOI at the top and 20-22 TOI on the bottom. But then there's a weird second distribution where Bure had a bunch of games with under 20 TOI, including 14 with 15-17 TOI.

Let's look at a couple of these games where Bure played under 20 minutes.

March 3, 2001, 2-2 vs ATL

• The game was 65 minutes long, so TOI for skaters would be 325 if there were 5 skaters on at all times. Florida's skaters only sum to 288 TOI.
• Florida took a few penalties and played a fair bit of 4-on-5 so their skater TOI should be about 310. 22 minutes missing.
• Bure is listed with 18:09 in ice time, 8th on the team, behind D-men Svehla, Hedican, Simpson, Barrie and forwards Kozlov, Nilson, Sillinger.
• Bure was 3rd in shifts with 35, behind only Svehla and Hedican. If he really played only 18:09, he averaged 31 seconds per shift
• Bure took 13 shots and scored 0 goals.

Feb 14, 2001, 4-2 vs PHX

• Game was 60 minutes long. Florida took 4 minors and allowed 1 PPG, so team TOI should sum to about 293
• Team TOI sums to only 271.
• Bure is listed with 16:35 ice time, 7th among FLA skaters and 4th among FLA forwards (behind Kozlov, Nilson, Niedermayer)
• Bure is listed with 29 shifts, #2 on FLA behind Svehla's 30, and #1 among FLA forwards. If he played 16:35, his shifts averaged 34 seconds.
• Bure took 3 shots and scored 3 goals.

There's over 20 minutes of missing TOI for FLA in both games. And Bure's TOI is weirdly low, even though he played a lot of shifts. I'm pretty sure Bure's TOI is not correct for either of these games, or for many others.

I would say probably any game where Bure had an average TOI/shift of under 45 seconds is wrong.

Date	Tm		Opp		G	A	PTS	+/-	SH	S%	SHFT	TOI	TOI/SHFT
2001-02-28	FLA	@	NYR	L	0	0	0	-1	10	0	24	16:56	42​
2001-03-20	FLA	@	MTL	T	1	1	2	1	5	20	26	18:08	42​
2001-03-28	FLA		MTL	T	0	0	0	-1	4	0	27	18:30	41​
2001-03-16	FLA		PIT	L	2	0	2	-1	12	16.7	25	16:39	40​
2001-02-24	FLA	@	NYI	L	1	0	1	-2	6	16.7	25	16:25	39​
2001-03-17	FLA		TOR	L	3	0	3	1	7	42.9	25	16:15	39​
2001-04-05	FLA	@	WSH	L	0	0	0	-1	2	0	24	15:20	38​
2001-02-26	FLA	@	NJD	L	2	0	2	-2	5	40	24	15:18	38​
2001-03-07	FLA		SJS	T	1	0	1	-1	8	12.5	34	20:06	35​
2001-01-24	FLA	@	WSH	L	0	0	0	0	6	0	26	15:12	35​
2001-02-14	FLA		PHX	W	3	0	3	1	3	100	29	16:35	34​
2001-04-02	FLA		BUF	L	0	1	1	-1	1	0	29	16:35	34​
2001-02-16	FLA		BOS	W	1	1	2	2	3	33.3	29	15:41	32​
2001-02-21	FLA	@	PIT	L-OT	1	0	1	1	4	25	29	15:40	32​
2001-01-12	FLA		CAR	T	1	0	1	0	4	25	29	15:08	31​
2001-03-03	FLA	@	ATL	T	0	1	1	0	13	0	35	18:09	31​
2001-03-23	FLA		WSH	W	2	0	2	2	4	50	32	15:13	29​
2001-03-02	FLA		ATL	L	1	1	2	-1	9	11.1	35	15:40	27​

What about Bure's 1999-00 season? There are a few weird TOI totals in there as well, where he played a lot of shifts but not a lot of TOI. Including one game where he is listed with 29 shifts and 0 TOI. Overall I think the 1999-00 numbers have fewer errors than the 2000-01 numbers, but I think Bure's listed TOI is low for that season too.

Do you guys agree that something is wrong here? Any thoughts on how/why it happened, and have you noticed anything similar for other players?

Click to read more...

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I haven't noticed this specifically with Bure but I have noticed some of the first "official" years of TOI data have games with 0:00 TOI (but you can't tell unless you drill down) and then the season TOI is too low because those are weighted in.

 

[overpass]

Looking at the Wayback Machine for Bure's player page, it appears the change was made between May and November of 2023. Bure's average ice time for his time in Florida dropped from 25:24 to 23:18.

May 2023

November 2023

 

[overpass]

And I was able to pull up Bure's game logs in the Internet Archive and find the differences. Notice that every game originally had more than 30 minutes TOI for Bure, and now has much less. And notice that now Bure's TOI for a game tops out at 29 and change.

My guess is that they subtracted 15+ minutes of TOI from every game where Bure had more than 30 minutes TOI. Maybe it was some kind of data validation process where they were trying to remove incorrect high outliers, but didn't realize that they were cutting off legitimate high values.

Date	Tm		Opp	SHFT	TOI (previous)	TOI (current)
2000-01-17	FLA		PHI	32	30:07:00	15:04
2000-01-21	FLA	@	ATL	28	30:25:00	15:13
2000-02-14	FLA	@	MTL	25	30:32:00	15:16
2000-04-01	FLA		TBL	29	31:45:00	15:53
2001-01-12	FLA		CAR	29	30:16:00	15:08
2001-01-24	FLA	@	WSH	26	30:24:00	15:12
2001-02-14	FLA		PHX	29	33:09:00	16:35
2001-02-16	FLA		BOS	29	31:21:00	15:41
2001-02-21	FLA	@	PIT	29	31:20:00	15:40
2001-02-24	FLA	@	NYI	25	32:50:00	16:25
2001-02-26	FLA	@	NJD	24	30:35:00	15:18
2001-02-28	FLA	@	NYR	24	33:52:00	16:56
2001-03-02	FLA		ATL	35	31:19:00	15:40
2001-03-03	FLA	@	ATL	35	36:17:00	18:09
2001-03-07	FLA		SJS	34	40:12:00	20:06
2001-03-16	FLA		PIT	25	33:18:00	16:39
2001-03-17	FLA		TOR	25	32:30:00	16:15
2001-03-20	FLA	@	MTL	26	36:15:00	18:08
2001-03-23	FLA		WSH	32	30:25:00	15:13
2001-03-28	FLA		MTL	27	37:00:00	18:30
2001-04-02	FLA		BUF	29	33:09:00	16:35
2001-04-05	FLA	@	WSH	24	30:39:00	15:20

 

[overpass]

Looking at all forwards on nhl.com and on hockey-reference, it looks like there are no longer any records of games where a forward had over 30 minutes TOI, with the exception of MacKinnon and Rantanen in one 2024 game. I think they must have done some kind of data validation which edited the TOI down for all games in which a forward had 30+ TOI recorded. Possibly before that 2024 game.

NHL Stats

The official source for NHL Stats including skaters, goalies, teams stats and more.

www.nhl.com

https://stathead.com/hockey/player-game-finder.cgi?request=1&order_by=goals&timeframe=seasons&year_min=1998&player_game_min=1&player_game_max=9999&ccomp%5B1%5D=gt&cval%5B1%5D=30&cstat%5B1%5D=time_on_ice&pos=F

But, per nhl.com, there were 20 instances where a forward had between 29:50 and 30:00 in TOI in a game! So the hard cut at 30 was obviously a bad decision and has led them to post some incorrect numbers.

I've sent feedback to hockey-reference to see if they're interested in fixing this issue. If anyone has a contact at nhl.com, would you mind bringing this issue to their attention?