Really?? Do you really believe your first statement? It's opinions similar to mine that are the reason for the Pens long term failure? I could address this one point in great detail but it is so devoid of any rational critical thinking, I will instead
.
Analytics are BS. Can you show me where analytics have been used and it's results have been both unique and valuable?
Here is the real problem with analytics, you don't give your "genius" formula all of the information available. Therefore no matter what the results you come up with, the result is biased based on the information you deemed important to use create your formula.
I have a brother that is computer scientist and he tells me story after story of the waste associated with his field. Why does this occur you may ask? Because the people that he reports to in an organization do not understand how people in his field design and implement their course of action. I'm sure the Carnegie Mellon guy is brilliant. He was so brilliant that he was able to sell his services to a professional team without bringing anything new to the table except his opinion and a shiny program that verifies it.
"Data" is not the plural of "anecdote." You've got one anecdote and you're extrapolating it to not just one, but two entire fields of science (both computer science and statistics).
Incidentally, I am a computer scientist (specifically, a software engineer with over 16 years of experience, to go along with my degree from Carnegie Mellon). The majority of my employers certainly have understood how people in my field design and implement our course of action. If they didn't, we would have failed. Miserably. I'm sorry your brother has not had a similar quality of employer as I've been able to enjoy for the majority of my career so far.
Statistics in hockey is fairly young. Even what we call "advanced metrics" is actually extremely basic stuff. But what they've been able to do is show that some statistics that are currently gathered to correlate strongly with an ability to win games. Note that this doesn't mean that those statistics
cause the team to win, but that they are indicators that the team is doing something well.
Sometimes these statistics only reinforce what we can intuitively figure out. This is not a bad thing. For instance, the idea that teams sit back and defend more when they have a lead late in a game has been statistically shown to be accurate. This is what is commonly called "score effects" by the hockey analytics community. That's why most stats people focus in on 5v5 "close" statistics, since those are the circumstances where score effects aren't impacting the data.
Other cases, though, sometimes should make teams reconsider their tactics. Such as the statistical analysis that shows that dumping the puck in and chasing after it is more likely to result in a scoring chance against than for. If you think about it, it makes sense - you're giving the puck away to the other team and only hoping to get it back. But entirely too many teams rely on dumping it in and "establishing a strong forecheck".
None of this means that someone can simply rely on statistics for everything. Context is important. But what statistics does do is help you determine where you ought to be looking harder. This is because of two basic concepts from psychology: 1. Confirmation bias and 2. Recency bias. The first says that you tend to only remember the things that confirm your belief, while the second says that what you've observed recently sticks out in your mind more than overall history. Statistics are a way to combat biases and force you to re-evaluate things that your emotions can cloud. Emotions can cause coaches to overplay someone just because they like them, rather than because they're actually good at hockey, and so when that player does something good, that's what sticks out to them. Recency bias strongly effects GMs when they're handing out contracts to players who just had a career year, especially if it was in the playoffs.
Being able to use statistics as a sort of check on your emotions is something that the Pens have clearly been lacking in recent years.