One of the best parts of being a member of SBN has been the unbelievable IT team that makes this site tick. If you've noticed, things have been changing since the first day but you might not have because it's been so damn smooth. This morning Super IT rolled out the 2nd phase of NHL sports data integration into the site. Thanks to Trei for the help and here's a quick tour based on his notes:

New Feature # 1 - Team Page

This page includes all posts you've associated with the team, the team news and the next game. Also, anytime you click the name of another team on your schedule you have a page for them too. If you have attached their team name to any posts they'll be aggregated there along w/ news and their next game. For example the Oilers page.

New Feature # 2 - Team Roster

Self-explanatory, but the best part is that all the player names link to the.....

New Feature # 3 - Player Page

Now, in the story editor you can attach players by name to your stories. Members of the blog can do the same on FanPosts and FanShots. Along with the basic player info, headshot and current year stats, all the content from your blog will be aggregated on this page. So it's important to tag posts properly. Funny ones are funny but they don't help ensure that all of the information that you can possibly want is linked properly. So do both if you want but at least the serious ones.

And just like team pages you also have pages on your blog for every other player in the league. For example the Ovechkin page on Pension Plan Puppets. Right now there is nothing in here but as we go through the archives and re-tag stories it'll all be populated. Going forward, if you've been to any of the baseball sites, it'll be awesome.

Note that player pages will be linked at the end of any stories that you attach them to as well.

New Feature # 4 - Team Stats

Pretty self-explanatory, but again the player names link to their player pages.

New Feature # 5 - Team News

There is apparently a small bug with this part where the news is not being displayed. Super IT is working on it and it will no doubt be fixed before you even notice that something is wrong. But you'll see the same headlines that you find
on your team page.

New Feature # 6 - Team Schedule and Scores

Friday I noted that the new schedule page is working. The entire season schedule and results are there and if you click on any game you'll see all of the stories, fanshots, and fanposts associated with the game. You can associate something with a game by choosing "Attach Event". You'll also see red stars beside some team names. These denote fellow SBN blogs. Once Mirtle is done they will all have stars. So that was pretty cool in and of itself.

Big news here is that we are now noting OT and SO on the relevant games. And when you click the 'coverage' link on the schedule, the event page now shows a full linescore and will link to the preview & recap of the event if we have those stories from Sports Network. As always we aggregate all stories that have had the event attached to them. Here is the coverage for the Leafs-Flames game.

New Feature # 7 - FanPosts

This is actually an old one but if you click through to the fanposts page you can look at them like a message board so you can see which are the most popular and which have been most recently active beyond those that are on the front page. This will help now that so many are being posted.

Final Notes

Everything has been tested quite a bit on staging - found the one news bug on
production - but if we have screwed anything up related to how hockey information should be presented let us know. We'll try to get it fixed quickly. You can report any problems or issues to support@sbnation.com.

There is a phase III that is on the way as well and once that is ready I'll post another roundup. One last note - this is just the baseline sports data that SBN are integrating right now. Across all sports we plan to expand our offerings - especially as it relates to player stats, stats leaders, etc.

A special thank you once againt to Trei and his team.

p.s. if you read this far, please rec the fanpost so that the information is up for the next two weeks.