There’s been a huge debate so far this NHL season over the introduction of analytics in hockey. The analytics in sports movement started with the ‘Moneyball’ approach from Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s in 2002, which was later translated into a book and a movie.
Many baseball clubs have embraced the new philosophy because of the novel and film, and now almost all 30 MLB teams have hired business and statistical major students right out of college, and have given them important roles within the organization.
The Toronto Maple Leafs surprised many when Brendan Shanahan hired assistant GM Kyle Dubas this summer, a 28-year-old that studied sports management at Brock University, and had no prior experience in pro hockey. His role is simple; use analytics to improve the Leafs chances at their first Stanley Cup since 1967.
TSN has set up an analytics department for the fans to better comprehend the role that numbers play in hockey. One of their new employees, and one of the top advanced statisticians in the game, Travis Yost, said in a recent interview that “this summer (he) would get an e-mail every two weeks” about one of his former classmates getting hired by NHL teams.
Former GM of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ned Colletti, and Alex Burwasser of Bloomberg Sports were part of JMSM14, the 19th Annual Sports Business Conference (http://JMSM.ca) on Friday, along with Yost, regarding analytics in sport, and the evolution of the numbers game. Colletti teamed up with Bloomberg sports to better understand these advanced stats, and ultimately win a World Series with this approach. The Boston Red Sox did so in 2004 with then-31-year-old Theo Epstein as their general manager.
Colletti has approached the advanced stats strategy cautiously but effectively. The Dodgers had one of the best regular season records in the MLB during his time as GM but the team was never able to get past the NLCS.
“Numbers will you get you there (in September) but a players mentality, and hard work will win you games in October” he told the crowd at Concordia University in Montreal. The mix between scouting reports and the numbers on paper when deciding to trade or draft a player is “about 45-48% analytics” for Colletti and the Dodgers.
When asked if he would ever hire a numbers-only manager to run his ball club, Colletti swiftly replied “if we put a guy in the dugout that never played in the pros before, the players won’t respect him”, but he still believes that “it’s possible for a numbers guy to whisper something in the coach’s ear” when it comes down to a tough decision in the game.
With this being said, the Leafs have taken a radical approach to the new system and might have gone too far into analytics when they hired Dubas if they hope to simply rely on numbers. After their epic collapse last March, when they went from playoff contenders to fallen leaves, Yost says numbers wouldn’t have changed anything, and that “they weren’t a good team, and didn’t identify that until it was too late”.
It is not just bad teams who have steered onto the numbers route, as the Chicago Blackhawks who are “unbelievable heavy [in] analytics” according to Yost. Chicago won the Stanley Cup in 2010 and 2013, while making it to the Conference Finals three times out of the past five seasons, and are becoming one of the league’s dynasties in the 21st century.
Another dynasty in today’s era with four straight Conference Final appearances, and two Cups, the L.A. Kings, are more of a traditionally-minded hockey club with a run-and-gun style and incredible depth that has 2010 Olympian Mike Richards playing on the fourth line.
Both management styles have worked in hockey, the traditional and the analytical, while both have also failed. A team like the Colorado Avalanche, a big numbers user, fell in seven games against the wild card Minnesota Wild in last year’s playoffs.
The Boston Bruins play more traditional hockey with big and physical players like the L.A. Kings, but were ousted in the second round last year against the formerly-small Montreal Canadiens. The Habs mirrored the Bruins size on the third and fourth lines to beat them at their own game. GM Peter Chiarelli’s team is beginning to falter as every great giant must fall down, so maybe they will be the next team to embrace analytics?
With Yost claiming that “(advanced analytics) will get so much bigger in the next five years, ten years” there’s no denying that numbers and geeks will be integrated into hockey management in the near future, and that analytics are here to stay. The only question is: will it work?
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