Hockey Reference Scraper

Scrape NHL and WHA player statistics from Hockey-Reference.com. Browse 8,700+ players across 26 letter index pages, or get detailed career stats including goals, assists, points, plus/minus, penalty minutes, and point shares.

Features

• Index Mode - Browse player index pages by letter. Extract names, positions, years active, and league (NHL/WHA)
• Detailed Mode - Follow player URLs for full career stats with season-by-season breakdowns
• Skater Stats - Goals, assists, points, plus/minus, penalty minutes, shots, shooting %, TOI, faceoffs, hits, blocks
• Goalie Stats - Wins, losses, GAA, save %, shutouts, quality starts, goals saved above average
• Playoff Stats - Separate regular season and playoff stat tables
• Point Shares - Offensive/defensive point shares from misc stats table
• Hall of Fame - Identifies Hall of Famers from bold formatting on index pages
• Biographical Info - Name, position, shoots/catches, height, weight, birth date, birth place, draft info

Modes

Index Mode (index)

Lists all players from one or more letter index pages. Fast, lightweight, no player page requests needed.

Input:

• scrapeType = index
• letter - Optional single letter a-z (leave empty for all 26 letters)
• maxResults - Maximum players to return (default: 500, max: 10000)

Output:

{
  "name": "Wayne Gretzky",
  "position": "C",
  "yearsActive": "1979-1999",
  "league": "NHL",
  "isHallOfFamer": true,
  "url": "https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/g/grMDwa99.html",
  "letter": "g",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-25T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Detailed Mode (detailed)

Fetches index pages first, then follows each player URL to extract full career statistics. Slower due to per-player requests with 3s rate limiting.

Input:

• scrapeType = detailed
• letter - Optional single letter (recommended to limit scope)
• maxResults - Maximum players to scrape (default: 500)

Skater Output:

{
  "name": "Wayne Gretzky",
  "position": "Center",
  "shoots": "Left",
  "height": "6-0",
  "weight": "185",
  "birthDate": "1961-01-26",
  "birthPlace": "Brantford, ON, CA",
  "isGoalie": false,
  "regularSeason": [
    {
      "season": "1979-80",
      "team": "EDM",
      "league": "NHL",
      "gamesPlayed": 79,
      "goals": 51,
      "assists": 86,
      "points": 137,
      "plusMinus": 15,
      "penaltyMinutes": 21,
      "powerPlayGoals": 13,
      "shots": 284,
      "shootingPct": 17.96
    }
  ],
  "regularSeasonCareerTotals": { "goals": 894, "assists": 1963, "points": 2857 },
  "playoffStats": [...],
  "playoffCareerTotals": {...},
  "miscStats": [...],
  "careerGoals": 894,
  "careerAssists": 1963,
  "careerPoints": 2857,
  "careerPointShares": 186.6,
  "url": "https://www.hockey-reference.com/players/g/gretzwa01.html"
}

Goalie Output:

{
  "name": "Martin Brodeur",
  "position": "Goalie",
  "isGoalie": true,
  "regularSeason": [
    {
      "season": "1993-94",
      "team": "NJD",
      "gamesPlayed": 47,
      "wins": 27,
      "losses": 11,
      "goalsAgainstAvg": 2.40,
      "savePct": 0.915,
      "shutouts": 3
    }
  ],
  "careerWins": 691,
  "careerShutouts": 125,
  "careerSavePct": 0.912
}

Skater Stats Extracted

Games Played (GP), Goals (G), Assists (A), Points (PTS), Plus/Minus (+/-), Penalty Minutes (PIM), Even Strength Goals, Power Play Goals, Short Handed Goals, Game Winning Goals, Even Strength Assists, Power Play Assists, Short Handed Assists, Shots, Shooting %, Time on Ice, Avg TOI, Faceoff Wins/Losses/%, Hits, Blocks, Takeaways, Giveaways

Goalie Stats Extracted

Games Played, Games Started, Wins, Losses, Ties, OT Losses, Goals Against, Shots Against, Saves, Save %, Goals Against Average, Shutouts, Minutes Played, Quality Starts, Quality Start %, Really Bad Starts, Goals Saved Above Average, Point Shares

Point Shares (Misc Stats)

Offensive Point Shares (OPS), Defensive Point Shares (DPS), Total Point Shares (PS)

Rate Limiting

The scraper uses a 3-second delay between all HTTP requests to respect Hockey-Reference's rate limits. Cloudflare protection is present but generally passes through with proper headers. For large runs, residential proxies are recommended.

Proxy Configuration

Hockey-Reference may rate-limit aggressive scraping. The default configuration uses Apify residential proxies for reliability.

Technical Notes

• Uses got-scraping + cheerio for fast HTML parsing (no browser needed)
• Extracts data from data-stat attributes on table cells for reliable field mapping
• Parses JSON-LD schema.org/Person data for biographical information
• Handles HTML comments (Hockey-Reference hides some stat tables inside comments)
• Automatically detects goalies vs skaters and extracts appropriate stat tables
• Incremental data pushing every 10 players in detailed mode
• Pay-per-event charging: billed per result returned