How to build a fantasy hockey app

Fantasy hockey rewards one thing above all: identifying which skaters generate offence at a rate their box score has not caught up to yet. That is a data problem, and it is the part every hobby project gets stuck on.

• Raw goal totals are power-play inflated. A winger who feasts on the man advantage looks elite until your league scores 5v5-weighted.
• Scraping NHL.com gives you counting stats and no shot-quality context, so you cannot separate a hot streak from a repeatable one.
• Player identity is the hidden tax — reconciling names across a stats source, an injury feed and a schedule feed is most of the work in a scraped build.
• Nobody wants to maintain a scraper through a season. The break always lands the night before your draft.

Every call below was run against production on the date in the footer, and the responses are trimmed copies of what came back. You need a free API key from the dashboard and nothing else — no SDK, no build step.

1. 01

   Get a key and confirm it works

   Create a free key in the dashboard, then confirm the gateway sees it. A 200 here means every later step is an authentication-free problem.

   Verify your keybash

   curl -s "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/coverage?sport=ice_hockey" \
     -H "x-api-key: $BBS_API_KEY"

   Real response, trimmed

   jsonjson

   { "data": { "sport": "ice_hockey", "coverage": "live", ... } }

2. 02

   Pull the 5v5 scoring leaderboard

   This is the spine of the draft board. GET /v1/nhl/leaders ranks skaters on 5-on-5 production only, so power-play specialists do not distort the board. Pass stat=points, or goals, assists, shots or xg.

   GET /v1/nhl/leadersbash

   curl -s "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/nhl/leaders?stat=points&min_games=20&limit=50" \
     -H "x-api-key: $BBS_API_KEY"

   Real response, trimmed

   jsonjson

   {
     "data": {
       "stat": "points",
       "season": 2025,
       "situation": "5on5",
       "min_games": 20,
       "leaders": [
         {
           "rank": 1,
           "player": { "id": "d074fa18-…", "name": "Nathan MacKinnon", "position": "C" },
           "team": { "id": "4c1f4bb8-…", "abbr": "COL" },
           "games_played": 79,
           "icetime_minutes": 1298.4,
           "goals": 22,
           "assists": 47,
           "points": 69,
           "shots": 201,
           "xg": 19.8,
           "goals_above_xg": 2.2
         }
       ]
     }
   }

3. 03

   Read goals_above_xg — this is the actual edge

   Every row carries xg (expected goals from shot quality) and goals_above_xg. A skater far above their expected goals is finishing hot; a skater far below is generating chances the results have not rewarded yet. That second group is where late-round value lives, and it is the number a scraped build does not have.

   Rank by underlying generation, not resultstypescript

   type Leader = {
     player: { id: string; name: string; position: string };
     team: { abbr: string };
     games_played: number;
     points: number;
     shots: number;
     xg: number | null;
     goals_above_xg: number | null;
   };
   
   const res = await fetch(
     'https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/nhl/leaders?stat=points&min_games=20&limit=100',
     { headers: { 'x-api-key': process.env.BBS_API_KEY! } },
   );
   const { data } = (await res.json()) as { data: { leaders: Leader[] } };
   
   // Skaters generating more than their finishing shows — the buy-low board.
   const buyLow = data.leaders
     .filter((l) => l.xg !== null && (l.goals_above_xg ?? 0) < -2)
     .sort((a, b) => (b.xg ?? 0) - (a.xg ?? 0));
   
   console.table(
     buyLow.map((l) => ({
       player: l.player.name,
       team: l.team.abbr,
       pts: l.points,
       xg: l.xg,
       over_under: l.goals_above_xg,
     })),
   );

4. 04

   Add per-game rates for each player

   The leaderboard is season totals. For a draft board you want rates, so a player who missed twenty games is not punished. GET /v1/players/:id/stats returns them. The ?sport= parameter is REQUIRED — omit it and you get a 400 telling you so.

   GET /v1/players/:id/statsbash

   curl -s "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/players/d074fa18-08f3-40c4-9c1e-7f85715f66c6/stats?sport=ice_hockey" \
     -H "x-api-key: $BBS_API_KEY"

   Real response, trimmed

   jsonjson

   {
     "data": {
       "sport": "ice_hockey",
       "position": "C",
       "gp": 268,
       "goals": 152,
       "assists": 267,
       "points": 419,
       "plus_minus": 125,
       "shots_on_goal": 1196,
       "goals_pg": 0.6,
       "assists_pg": 1,
       "points_pg": 1.6,
       "shots_pg": 4.5,
       "toi_per_game_seconds": 1359,
       "save_pct": null,
       "gaa": null
     },
     "meta": { "matches_counted": 268, "seasons_counted": [2025, 2024, 2023] }
   }

5. 05

   Flag injured players before they reach your board

   Nothing wrecks a draft tool faster than ranking a player who is out. GET /v1/injuries?sport=ice_hockey returns the current list with a status and an expected return date; filter your board against it.

   GET /v1/injuriesbash

   curl -s "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/injuries?sport=ice_hockey" \
     -H "x-api-key: $BBS_API_KEY"

   Real response, trimmed

   jsonjson

   {
     "data": {
       "sport": "ice_hockey",
       "count": 110,
       "injuries": [
         {
           "player": { "id": "06ecb18a-…", "name": "Aaron Ekblad",
                       "team": { "name": "Florida Panthers", "abbreviation": "FLA" } },
           "status": "Out",
           "injury_type": "Finger",
           "return_date": "2026-09-15"
         }
       ]
     }
   }

6. 06

   Weight by schedule strength with team Elo

   A player on a team that plays the league's best defences all March is worth less than their rate suggests. GET /v1/teams/:id/elo gives every team a rating; join it to your board through the team id already on each leaderboard row.

   GET /v1/teams/:id/elobash

   curl -s "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/teams/bc4ad6fe-a20a-4537-8fcc-839351ac4f52/elo" \
     -H "x-api-key: $BBS_API_KEY"

   Real response, trimmed

   jsonjson

   {
     "data": {
       "name": "Carolina Hurricanes",
       "abbreviation": "CAR",
       "sport": "ice_hockey",
       "league": "NHL",
       "elo_rating": 1685.9,
       "elo_rank": 1,
       "games_counted": 94
     }
   }

Everything above runs on a free key. The board works, ranks and drafts. What the free tier does not give you is the modelled layer — the numbers we compute rather than collect — and for a draft tool that layer is the product.

// Free key — /v1/teams/:id/elo
{
  "elo_rating": 1685.9,
  "elo_rank": null,
  "upgrade": { "locked": ["elo_rank", "elo/history", "win_probability"] }
}

// Solo — /v1/players/:id/tier
{
  "tier": 2,
  "tier_label": "World Class",
  "tier_score": 62.89,
  "percentile": 95.29,
  "position_percentile": 95.29,
  "primary_metric": "nhl_xg_plus_a1_per_60",
  "primary_metric_value": 1.786
}

• Player tier and percentile — one position-adjusted number per skater, built on expected goals plus primary assists per 60. This is the column that makes a draft board feel authoritative.
• Elo rank and rating history — the free tier returns the rating; rank, the trend and win probability are Solo.
• Season projections and rolling form — /v1/players/:id/season-projection and /v1/players/:id/rolling-stats, for in-season waiver decisions rather than draft-day ones.
• Market data stays separate. Odds, line divergence and closing-line value sit on Edge, not Solo — they come from licensed market feeds rather than our models.

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Can I build a fantasy hockey app on the free tier?

Yes. The leaderboard, per-player rates, injuries, standings and team Elo ratings are all available on a free key, which is 1,000 requests a day (2,000 with GitHub connected) and needs no credit card. The Solo plan adds the modelled layer — player tiers, Elo rank and history, projections.

What NHL data does the API actually hold?

Twelve seasons, 2014-15 through 2025-26. Scores, standings, injuries and Elo ratings are live. The 5v5 expected-goals leaderboard is sourced from MoneyPuck and refreshes daily. Per-game box scores are post-game finals rather than in-game updates. Call GET /v1/coverage?sport=ice_hockey for the current machine-readable answer rather than trusting this paragraph.

Why does the leaderboard only show 5-on-5 numbers?

Because all-situations totals are dominated by power-play usage, which is a coaching decision rather than a player quality signal. 5v5 production is the more repeatable measure, and repeatability is what a draft board is trying to estimate.

Do I need the MCP server, or can I just call the REST API?

Either. The MCP server lets an AI agent read the data while it writes your code, which is faster if you are already working in an agentic editor. The REST API is the complete surface and every MCP tool is backed by it. The MCP server currently exposes five read tools; the leaderboard and tier endpoints are REST-only for now.

How do I handle player identity across endpoints?

You do not have to. Every endpoint returns the same player id, so the leaderboard row, the per-player stats call and the injury list join directly. Name reconciliation is the tax you pay when scraping several sources; it is the main thing this API removes.