The Athletic’s Max Bultman spoke with 4 different sports’ executives about the data-driven world that the Red Wings are delving into as the team searches for a full-time general manager.
Bultman duly notes that the NHL and hockey in general are going through an information revolution, in which streams of new data are being incorporated through the NHL’s EDGE stats, high-speed video, skills coaching tailored to individual players and a whole lot of sorting through all the data and translating it into decisive decision-making.
This article is very wordy and a little technical, but Bultman’s conversation with Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito is particularly enlightening:
While Zito’s Cup-winning front offices, for example, notably included Sunny Mehta — now the GM of the New Jersey Devils — with a background in data science, they also featured multiple former NHL players, with Gregory Campbell and Roberto Luongo in high-level roles, NCAA champion player-turned-agent Brett Peterson as an assistant GM, and a long-tenured coach in Paul Maurice behind the bench.
It wasn’t necessarily any one of those skill sets that elevated the Panthers. But it may well have been the combination.
“It’s that buy-in where everybody is respected for their role,” Zito said. “And they, in turn, by being good at what they do, help everybody else be better and fill voids so that the puzzle comes together as a whole. And I don’t think that’s any different than other businesses or other collaborative efforts.”
In that sense, it all comes back to building a team — as much in the front office as on the ice. There are now all kinds of different specialized functions in front offices, ranging from data work and sports science to skills coaching, psychology and more.
“We’re borrowing things from other worlds to try and find these edges,” said Simon Wilson, sporting director at English soccer club Sheffield Wednesday, and previously the strategy and performance manager at Manchester City. “And that’s led to the accumulation of lots and lots of experts that, you don’t know when you’re going to need them, but you know you will need them.”
As a result, more people have a voice in decisions. And while there is still room for the person in charge to simply make a call unilaterally, it only makes sense to take advantage of that range of perspectives.
“For the most part, at least with our group, it’s probably a collaboration of ideas with a final decision being made based on everybody’s (input) — at least for me,” Zito said. “It’s rare that I would make a decision without consulting someone.”
Continued (paywall); a lot of the talk about “analytics” sounds fancy and detached from reality, but it’s really about taking all the statistical observations and combining them with the good, old-fashioned “eye tests” of observing and evaluating player performance.
The data and the observations have to be integrated into a whole picture of players and their pluses and minuses, analyses of teams’ strengths and weaknesses, and everyone from nutritionists to trainers and coaches must get in the loop in terms of getting a leg up on the opposition through integration of data and observations.
