This page provides the recommended format for articles about ice hockey players. Scott Walker's information is used to illustrate examples, except for some goaltender-specific information. Not all articles will slavishly conform to this standard; obviously, superstars such as Wayne Gretzky will have longer and more involved articles than less well-known players (ex. Dallas Drake).
Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they could be unnecessarily distracting and might give undue prominence to one field among many. See MOS:INFOBOXFLAG for more on this.
When listing a player's former_teams, the established practice is to include solely teams from top tier leagues in the infobox if a player's been on one, and only include teams from second-tier or lower if that's the highest level a player reached.
The first paragraph should be a very short introduction, including the player's position and notable teams for which he played. Do not say that the player "was" a hockey player unless he is deceased; rather say that he is a retired hockey player.
The following is a good example:
Scott Walker (born July 19, 1973) is a Canadian professional ice hockey player, principally for the Nashville Predators. He plays right wing, but prior to the 1996–97 NHL season played defense.
The next section should be in paragraph form and provide an overview of the player's career. It should note in which draft the player was drafted (or, if the player was undrafted, the article should note that fact). Drafts should be formatted as: [[1999 NHL Entry Draft]].
When noting the year that player did something in the NHL, use the [[2001–02 NHL season]] tags.
The following is an example of a Playing Career section:
Scott Walker first played junior hockey for Kitchener of the OHA Junior 'B' league in 1989–90, moving to his hometown Cambridge team later that season. In 1991, he moved up to the Owen Sound Platers of the Ontario Hockey League for two seasons. His play with the Platers led the Vancouver Canucks to select him in the fifth round, 124th overall, in the 1993 NHL Entry Draft. He first joined the Canucks's American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate Hamilton in 1993-94, moving to Syracuse with the team for the 1994–95 season.
Walker made his NHL debut with the Canucks in 1994, splitting the 1994–95 season with Syracuse before becoming a full-time NHL player in 1995–96. He played three full seasons with the Canucks before being left unprotected in the 1998 NHL Expansion Draft. He was selected by the Nashville Predators.
Walker played seven seasons with Predators before being traded to the Carolina Hurricanes in July 2006. Walker became the highest-scoring player in Nashville Predators history during the 2003–04 NHL season. At that time he was one of only three remaining original Predators on the Nashville roster (along with Greg Johnson and Tomas Vokoun). When Greg Johnson was sidelined with injuries, Walker served as the Predators' interim captain from January 12 - January 25, 2003.
On June 20, 2007, the Hurricanes announced that Walker signed a new three-year contract at $2.5 million per season.
He played 589 regular season NHL games over ten seasons before making it to post season play. That is the second longest wait in NHL history. Only Guy Charron played more games without making the playoffs. Charron retired in 1981 after 734 games, before he ever played a single post season game.
He was the first person to ever score an NHL goal at Glendale Arena when on December 27, 2003 he got the puck past Sean Burke at 14:17 of the first period in the arena's first hockey game.
After the playing career comes the Awards section. This is a bulleted list of any awards the player has earned. Citations do not necessarily have to be major awards (like the Norris Trophy or Lady Byng), but they do have to be notable. Put them in chronological order if possible.
NHL's Offensive Player of the Week for December 22–28, 2003.
The next section is be a bulleted list of any records the person holds. It is acceptable to list records the person no longer holds, as long is it is noted who took the record from them, and when the record was taken from them.
The records listed can be of any level of notoriety (obviously not everyone is Wayne Gretzky). They can be for a franchise, nation, or league. Be sure and note what type of record (team record, league record, etc.) the person holds, as well as the year in which they were set, if applicable.
Nashville Predators' franchise record for points in a season (67)
Nashville Predators' franchise record for career points (231)
Nashville Predators' franchise record for career goals (91)
Nashville Predators' franchise record for penalty minutes (429)
NHL record for games played before making the post season (589) -- (Guy Charron played 734 but he never appeared in the post season).
The next section is a wikitable of the player's statistics. There can be more than one totals section, but be sure to include the NHL (or highest league played in) totals. Do not include statistics from international competition; these will be included in the International Competition section below. As well, please refrain from updating stats mid-season, as it complicates things and Wikipedia's purpose is not to provide up-to-the-date statistics. Make sure to link team, and league articles (assuming there are articles for them), and the headings G, A, Pts and PIM. Additionally refrain from using +/-, GWG, SHG, etc. statistics as well, and only used Games Played (GP), Goals (G), Assists (A), Total points (Pts) and Penalty minutes (PIM).
Goalie stats and Skater stats are necessarily different.
The following is an example of a Career stats entry for a skater:
The final section is the International Play section. If the player does not have a lot of international play, this can be a simple bullet list and stats. If the player has significant international play (i.e. Ivan Hlinka) then the section could be significantly larger, or the content could be included in Playing Career above.
Make sure to create a medal table for players who have made the top 3 on their respective team. Included must be the year and location, the medal (Gold, Silver, Bronze) and the row must be under a heading with its tournament type.
The following is an example of an International Play section. Note that the country name links to the page of the national team and the competition names link to the most specific page available - "2004 World Cup of Hockey" and "Ice hockey at the 2006 Winter Olympics", for example, and simply "Ice Hockey World Championships" before 2004. Captaincy, alternate captaincy, and a top 3 finish in the competition should be noted in brackets as well. If statistics cannot be found for all the competitions, include just the ones you can find in the table. This example is from Darius Kasparitis and includes most of the situations described:
The following is a proposed guideline for a Transactions section:
The Transactions section is an optional section to be used with common sense. It is intended to relieve the prose from having too much details. It should be used only if several significant transactions have occurred in a career. For example, trades, or free agent signings when changing teams. Not for re-signings, not for being called up or sent down within an organization.
The following is an example from Grant Fuhr. This would be too much detail for a prose section. Citations or links to the transactions section of a league season would improve the following example.
Most players will have several categories to which they will belong. Each player should have a category for their nationality and for each team that he or she has ever played for. All NHL teams have categories, as well as most junior teams and many minor league and college teams.
If a player's article is not formatted according to this standard, then his or her name should be included at: Wikipedia:List of unformatted ice hockey players. Feel free to take any article on that list and properly format it!
Do your best to find or produce free licensed images of players for the biographies article. You may want to upload pictures you've taken to Wikimedia Commons, so that they can be used in any international Wikipedia.
Images from NHLPA Website are not free. They are copyrighted for The National Hockey League Players' Association, and any reproduction or publication of any part of the content of the NHLPA Website, without the express written permission of the NHLPA is prohibited. [1]. Moreover, even if NHLPA would give permission for the use of its images on Wikipedia, those images would still not be free, and could only be used in accordance to Wikipedia's policy on usage of unfree material, that among other things, forbids the use of unfree images where a free alternative "could be created" (which is the case for living players).
Played on a senior national team for the World Championship, in the highest pool the IIHF maintained in any given year (Note: playing in lower pools that do not actually contest for the World Champion title is not enough to satisfy inclusion requirements).
For coaches or managers of ice hockey teams, substitute "coached" or "managed" for "played" in the player guidelines.
For participants in defunct leagues who satisfy any of these achievement standards, please see the ice hockey league assessment maintained by the Ice Hockey WikiProject. For leagues still in existence, only those listed above satisfy the specified criteria.
