The Hockey Writers’ Tony Wolak offers a unique take on the belief that the Red Wings are going to embrace an “analytics-driven” front office under their next GM and/or president of hockey operations:
Let me get this out of the way up front: Embracing analytics does not mean replacing scouts with algorithms, ignoring hockey experience, or allowing spreadsheets to dictate every decision.
It’s a tool to aid decision-making. It’s research and findings, then having that context as one of many inputs. That’s it.
This is what businesses and other sports leagues have been doing for years. Companies increasingly rely on data-driven decision-making because intuition alone is not enough in competitive environments. Data allows organizations to test assumptions, measure outcomes, and make adjustments based on evidence rather than relying solely on tradition or instinct.
Take, for example, a marketing campaign. If research is done and it’s determined that email is the best way to reach your customers (and generates the most customer action), that’s analytics. It’s a basic example, but an example nonetheless.
Perhaps the greatest value, though, lies in maximizing the information available. More specifically, developing proprietary insights from internal and third-party data.
In today’s NHL, every team has access to similar resources. Public analytics models, video databases, tracking information, and third-party reports (i.e. Sportlogiq) are widely available. Every organization can look at the same numbers, analyze the same trends, and identify many of the same players.
That makes proprietary data and internal analysis all the more valuable. The teams that create their own models, develop unique evaluation methods, and uncover insights others do not see are the ones with the greatest opportunity to gain an edge. A third-party report may tell every team that a player is undervalued. A proprietary model may reveal why that player is undervalued, whether those traits translate to a specific system, and whether he is more likely to outperform his contract.
Continued; I think that this is a particularly good guide to the concept of “analytics” as a weapon with which teams can utilize data to best build their own models with which to evaluate players and pass both the “eye test” and the “smell test,” as it were.
