In mid-July, this story would be a welcome beacon of Wings talk in what’s usually the quietest portion of the summer, but for now, this story is something of an outlier:
According to the Associated Press’s Larry Lage, the NHL is already testing technologies which track players’ skating and shooting speeds, lengths, trajectories, etc., and there is some significant debate on the league-wide, team-by-team and player-by-player levels as to whether making such data public would be a good thing or a bad thing:
Even in the Detroit Red Wings’ dressing room, there wasn’t a consensus.
“If you track players and show how fast you’re skating, I think fans will be able to appreciate it and it will look cool on TV,” Red Wings center Dylan Larkin said .
Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg provided another perspective.
“I’m not a big fan of that because eventually that will be used as a disadvantage for players,” Zetterberg said. “Even though they say it won’t be, it will be in contracts and it will be used against players in all different areas with management and coaching issues.”
[NHL deputy commissioner Bill] Daly insisted he doesn’t buy that argument.
“Our experience with enhanced statistics is entirely the opposite,” Daly said. “Players and agents have historically and virtually without exception been able to use enhanced statistics and analytics to their individual benefit. That’s just a fact.”
Lage continues…what do you think about the concept of making this data publicly available, and/or promoting it as part of a game’s statistical and broadcast package?
