QMJHL website’s new player pages are now even more superior to WHL and OHL counterparts

Anybody that follows junior hockey and has a modicum of interest in statistics much prefers the Quebec League's version of the statistics page. Unlike the Western and Ontario Hockey League websites, the Q offers shots on goal and faceoffs, making it much easier to judge a player's contribution.

Those player pages just got even better. The QMJHL added yesterday several changes to their player pages, including a more streamlined look featuring a plug-in that allows users to toggle between player statistics pages and game-by-game tabs much quicker. The site kept up the traditional "Media" tab present on the player pages for WHL and OHL players, but that has been expanded to include more than recent stories.

The look is very good, and also very useful. There's a new "Detailed Stats" page that includes player splits for home and road, months of the year, as well as head-to-head records against opponents. Did you know that against the Quebec Remparts in 1984, Mario Lemieux scored 18 goals and 42 points in seven games for the Laval Voisins, or that Patrick Roy went 3-16-0 on the road with the Granby Bisons in 1985? I can't think of many situations where split junior statistics of Hall of Fame players would be of great importance, but it's nice that the QMJHL has collected all this information. Tab "Career Highs" or "Records" for a list of achievements by both of those players. That's information you used to have to dig high and low for, but now Roy's player page comes with all sorts of useful information.

For current players, the player charts are now updated to include shootout statistics, which were previously only available in the final statistical report released by the league at the end of the season.

The ease-of-use makes the QMJHL a much easier league to research than the WHL and the OHL, and you can hope until it's a matter of time before either of those leagues release individual shots and faceoff numbers, because they're lagging behind significantly in that department. The current Q setup makes it easy to compare Nathan MacKinnon's numbers to Sidney Crosby's, but there are only so many ways to compare Connor McDavid's 15-year-old statistics to John Tavares's. That's just points and even strength points. Without looking at shots on goal or shooting percentage, "points" is a little void of context, and it helps to put very productive years in perspective. A player that shoots over 25% like Jean-Sébastien Dea last season isn't likely to continue putting pucks in the net at that rate, so establishing sustainable production rates from players outside the "Q" is difficult to do early in the season.

That's if you want to get into the nitty-gritty however. The player pages are equally good for useless trivia or killing a few minutes. We can only hope it's only another year or so before the two other major junior leagues in Canada bring their player pages out of the 20th century.