I was pretty confused about the lines in yesterday’s Bruins game against the Devils. So, modeled off of this blog post about shared time on ice of the entire NHL through the 2019-2020 season, I made some visualizations of the Bruins forwards’ shared time on ice in the last two games.

Interpreting the visualizations

The visualizations are interactive, you can click around and drag the players around!

  • Each circle represents a player
  • The size of the circle is proportional to total time on ice
  • Two players are connected if they spent at least two minutes on the ice together (including power plays / penalty kills, but excluding overtime)
  • The thickness of the connection is proportional to shared time on ice

Game 1 (1/14) vs Devils

It’s very clear from the thickness of the connections between players what the lines were. There are four distinct thick triangles:

  • Marchand, Bergeron, Studnicka
  • DeBrusk, Krejci, Kase
  • Ritchie, Coyle, Bjork
  • Frederic, Kuraly, Wagner

Game 2 (1/16) vs Devils

The third and fourth lines are clear from the thickness of the triangles:

  • Ritchie, Coyle, Smith
  • Frederic, Kuraly, Wagner

And it’s clear that Bergeron and Marchand (predictably) spent a lot of time on ice together.

But, the rest of the visualization confirms that the lines were as all over the place as it looked to me