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Teams & Rosters

This vignette shows how to retrieve team information and player rosters. These endpoints are also the starting point for most other workflows — you'll need team IDs to pull rosters, and player IDs from rosters to look up individual stats.

Get All Teams

get_all_teams() returns every NHL franchise with conference and division context:

from slapyshot import NHLClient

client = NHLClient()
teams = client.teams.get_all_teams()
display(teams)

Columns returned: id, name, market, alias, founded, conference_id, conference_name, division_id, division_name

Filter by conference

western = teams.filter(pl.col("conference_name") == "WESTERN CONFERENCE")
display(western.select(["name", "market", "division_name"]))

Filter by division

atlantic = teams.filter(pl.col("division_name") == "Atlantic")
display(atlantic.select(["name", "market", "alias"]))

Sort by founding year

oldest = teams.sort("founded").select(["name", "market", "founded"])
display(oldest)

Get a Team Roster

Once you have a team ID, pass it to get_team_roster() to get the current player list:

import polars as pl

# Get the team ID for the team you want
teams = client.teams.get_all_teams()
team_id = teams.filter(pl.col("name") == "Lightning")["id"][0]

# Pull the roster

roster = client.teams.get_team_roster(team_id)

display(roster)

Columns returned: id, full_name, first_name, last_name, jersey_number, primary_position, birth_date, birth_city, birth_country, height, weight, handedness, team_id, team_name

Filter by position

# All goaltenders
goalies = roster.filter(pl.col("primary_position") == "G")
display(goalies.select(["full_name", "jersey_number", "shoots_catches"]))

# All forwards (C, LW, RW)
forwards = roster.filter(pl.col("primary_position").is_in(["C", "LW", "RW"]))
display(forwards.select(["full_name", "primary_position", "jersey_number"]))

Find a player ID

Player IDs are stable and can be stored for reuse. Here's how to look one up:

player_id = roster.filter(
    pl.col("full_name").str.contains("Kucherov")
)["id"][0]

display(player_id)
# "92bee224-bf40-4b76-b8c2-1f690bbc1f22"

get_team_profile() vs get_team_roster()

Both methods hit the same endpoint and return identical data. Use whichever reads more naturally in your code:

# These are equivalent
roster  = client.teams.get_team_roster(team_id)
profile = client.teams.get_team_profile(team_id)

Typical Workflow

Teams and rosters are the entry point for most SlaPyShot workflows:

graph LR
    A[get_all_teams] -->|team_id| B[get_team_roster]
    B -->|player_id| C[get_player_profile]
    A -->|team_id| D[get_player_season_stats]

Save IDs for later

Team IDs and player IDs never change once assigned by SportRadar. It's safe to hardcode them or store them in a config file so you don't have to look them up on every run.