Support Based Measures Applied to Ice Hockey Scoring Summaries : Extended Version

We present the Hockey Line Extraction (HLE) Algorithm, which examines ice hockey scoring summaries in an attempt to determine a team's lines. The players on a hockey team are divided into units called " lines " that appear together on the ice. While many statistics are available on the Internet for hockey players and teams in the National Hockey League (NHL), accurately identifying current lines for a team is difficult. The HLE algorithm uses single link clustering, support based measures and positional information to identify lines of players. The HLE Algorithm and appropriate visualization techniques have been implemented in the Hockey Lines software that enables users to view relationships between players on a team.