This may or may not come as a surprise to some, but I’m a bit “old school”. I teeter somewhere in between curmudgeonly and “get off my lawn you punk!” I’ll be the first to admit that I am/was late to the advanced statistics game. Choosing to do the old-fashioned thing and watch games seemed to me to be the most effective way to learn about players, their tendencies, strengths and weaknesses.
Fancy words like “Fenwick” and “Corsi” made me bristle. I’m not sure why or how that phenomenon took place but I found myself increasingly on the side opposite of these “ground-breaking metrics”.
Perhaps it was the unadulterated snark that came from the stat folks. The ingrained pretention that oozed from every new acronym for a statistic posted without explanation made me hate these people and their fuzzy mathematics.
On Tuesday the Toronto Maple Leafs sent a bit of a shockwave through the crotchety old hockey media world by hiring young, 28-year old Kyle Dubas as assistant general manager. Dubas previous experience was as the general manager for the OHL’s Sault St. Marie Greyhounds. He has been lauded for his “progressive style, work ethic and maturation beyond his years”.
Progressive style?!?! Who is this fancy pants youngster and his crazy hockey thoughts!
Welcome to the new age of the NHL folks. Think Billy Beane and Moneyball, except with sticks and pucks versus bats and balls. Wins above replacement versus on base percentage.
I’m still not 100% convinced that advanced statistical analysis is the key to success in the NHL. While the statistics support that players with higher percentage of “X” achieve great success, I don’t think Thomas Edison soaring on a bald eagle with a tattered American flag, a flamethrower and a big ol’ bottle of whiskey could convince me that they are the effect instead of the cause.
Dubas will have his work cut out for him in the hockey furnace of Toronto. It’s literally a giant gasoline can dangling over a fire pit. The Maple Leaf fans are loyal to a fault but always seem to keep their pitchforks nearby when it’s time to run some one out of town. The most interesting dynamic will be the relationship between Dubas and the players and coaches.
Professional athletes don’t think about metrics that much. They don’t think as much as the people who watch them and write about them do. There are obvious exceptions to this rule as there are to any, but if you think that LeBron James is good at basketball because of the way he breaks down algorithms, you are a crazy person.
Sidney Crosby spends hours skating, shooting, passing and stick handling to win championships, not increase his Corsi%. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I know. Corsi isn’t a focus Rob, it measures a player’s puck possession, approximately. By approximately, I mean that it is more specifically used to measure the percentage of a team’s shots while said player is on the ice.
Extraskater.com is an amazing website that will give you (and me) layman definitions for the statistics that are tracked. These nouveau stats are based on the premise that “if you don’t have the puck, you can’t score”
If you’d like to join the conversations with your pinky-extended, espresso-drinking advanced stats friends, here is a handy list of definitions and acronyms so that you can talk down to your less intelligent hockey friends and perpetuate the cycle.
I pay attention to advanced statistics now more than ever because they do tend to be a useful tool for number crunchers. The eyeball test will always be the most effective tool to determine elite players, but the metrics used to measure a marginal player’s value can be invaluable when filling out a roster.
As a crusty old-timer, I’ll admit that I have been swayed by the masses. While I don’t plan on selling my soul to all statistical measurements in hockey, I officially acknowledge their significance in the sport. Now get off my lawn, punk!