help me data nerds

[tirri]

i have got pretty extensive nhl data from the last few years but i would still want more interesting stats

are there any easy ways to collect some of the data from the events htm page on this list http://www.nhl.com/ice/gamestats.htm?se ... v-sts-gbyg
(ie, data from these pages http://www.nhl.com/scores/htmlreports/2 ... 020624.HTM)
id need at least the date, home team, visiting team and some relevant data from the 2 tables in a single row in some easy to use format that i could then read into R and join with all the other data i have

i would need the data from every match of the season so from about 720 matches last season and 1200 matches from maybe 3-4 seasons before that. i havent found a good summary page with the needed game-by-game stats so those events pages are the only source of relevant data i know of

i might be able to scrape the data using R and some loops or something since the page numbering seems to go from 20001 to 20720 and so on, but i want to know if there are any better or easier ways. im in no way a data collection expert, my experties come in the later stages of the process.

i know there are better places to ask this question in but i figured id start here cause the myth community very rarely fails

[dac]

quite possible to do.

give me an incentive to take time out of my day for this