Joe Sakic - Record as Colorado Avalanche GM - Part III (Updates in First Post)

[Hasbro]

Yep, nonsequitirs and sarcastic one-liners are all you got.

You are the one telling me these guys are exceptions to the philosophy, which the team periodically breaks from for some reason.

Again I’m always amazed that statwhackers can’t answer simple questions like finding out if there is a correlation between size and durability or if gooning it up during a blowout loss has any effect on subsequent matchups. It’s always the new bell or whistle.

 

[Pokecheque]

Every team takes analytics seriously. So the Avs obviously are no exception. That isn't the issue.

It's knowing how to build a team with the right culture, the right compete, the right character, the right mental toughness, and the right work ethic to play just as hard defensively as you do offensively.

That's where Sakic has excelled and Dubas has failed. If you focus too much on the analytics, and don't put enough emphasis on the other traits, you end up with a group of individuals, not a team.

There's a reason why Nate didn't want there to be many changes to the team the last couple years, and why Sakic followed suit.

The culture the Avs have right now makes them deadly. They're a close knit group off the ice and they play that way on the ice. They play for each other and hold each other accountable.

I bet you MacKinnon, Mikko, and Makar don't have the star persona in that locker room that Matthews and Marner do. Who's gonna tell them they need to get their shit together and start battling harder out there?

The Avs on the other hand do have guys that can have those tough conversation to tell the core guys they need to get going. We know that because they've talked about it. That's why they're a team. Not a group of individuals.

I will say this--when your best players are also the best leaders on the team you've got it made. Obviously guys like Nate and Landy demand a lot out of the team, they lead by example but they also appear to be very good at talking the talk as well.

With Toronto, well, I fully believe Auston Matthews quite literally cost himself the captaincy of the Maple Leafs when he had that idiotic drunken episode and got arrested for it, and then didn't tell the Leafs about it. That ain't leadership, that ain't character, and wildly talented as he is, that ain't what you want the face of your franchise to be doing. I'm one of the people who usually decries all this "intangibles" mumbo-jumbo but I think in this case, perhaps such character flaws might be worth noting. Also, I've no time for Mitchell Marner to be demanding gamebreaker money and then letting the game break him. Yeah, no dude, you're supposed to be the guy who can take over a game, and stats are showing he can't fight his way past competent defensemen assigned to guard him. That ain't a gamebreaker. That's just...a really good player. And that's not nearly good enough.

Not gonna tell anyone here, Hasbro or otherwise, that analytics are this magical tool that guarantees a winner. It's just a different set of eyes that inform you in ways the eye test can't. There's much more to being a GM than just looking at the numbers. They inform the decision-maker, but they don't guarantee he'll make the right decision. Right now, Dubas and the Leafs have failed. Miserably. That's not because analytics failed, it's because the humans making the decisions partially informed by those numbers failed, and the players failed.

I agree that perhaps the culture in Toronto is broken. I'm not sure, but when even Dubas feels the need to fill the roster with old guys who can barely skate for their "leadership" that tells me he feels there isn't enough leadership at the top. That's an issue the Avs don't have.

 

[Pokecheque]

The Avs entire plan is supported by analytics but it isn't driven by analytics. That's the difference IMO.

Burakovsky and Toews were about analytics but not solely about that. They identified that they would be a good fit in the locker room, work hard defensively, and buy into the coach's system.

If you look at Burky, he may not be a Selke finalist, but he works defensively. He doesn't dog back checks. He works. And he's a guy that fits in well in that locker room.

These aren't things you can pick up from analytics. If you give too much weight to analytics over these things, you end up with one dimensional players that don't play as a team.

I don't think Dubas is as good at identifying team chemistry and the intangibles outside of offensive play. I think he's closer to the EA sports side of building what looks like a good team on paper.

Not that he can't be good at this in the future, but that's the problem with thinking these young wiz kids like Chayka and Dubas can make up for their lack of experience, because they understand analytics better than other GM's.

All due respect, I don't know if I agree with your breakdown here.

Is there really any evidence that Burakovsky was picked because he'd be a good fit in the locker room? He was continually in the doghouse in Washington. Nichushkin had a downright toxic reputation both in the NHL and the KHL, the Avs decided to take a flyer on both, and we should be glad they did. Both were most assuredly analytics-informed decisions. I'm not so sure intangibles were a factor, however.

Conversely, I don't think Dubas just ignored intangibles and went only with what the numbers told him. If he did, he never would've signed John Tavares. He's an elite talent but also in his late twenties--that's a decision based on the leadership qualities he brings as much as it is his talent.

And I'll just reiterate--I don't think it's really accurate to call Chayka an analytics "whiz kid" because nothing he did in Arizona remotely resembled what an analytics-driven front office would do. Call Dubas that if you want, I guess, but he also proved this last offseason that he values "old school grit" a lot more than any of us, me included, ever thought. Really, the "poster children" of the analytics movement appear to be Tampa, Detroit, and Colorado.

I'd like to break down where I think Dubas failed when I have the time. Most of it has to do with goaltending and some key prospects that he just plain bet way too much on. Also, in hindsight, I think the Tavares signing was a huge mistake, despite the fact that he's played quite well for the Leafs. But I'll wait to do that when I have more time.

 

[Pokecheque]

You are the one telling me these guys are exceptions to the philosophy, which the team periodically breaks from for some reason.

Again I’m always amazed that statwhackers can’t answer simple questions like finding out if there is a correlation between size and durability or if gooning it up during a blowout loss has any effect on subsequent matchups. It’s always the new bell or whistle.

I thought he was. Maybe I was wrong. See? How hard is it to admit you might not be 100% right about something?

Compher on the other hand most assuredly remains a guy with not-good analytics, and his contract is bad.

Conversely, a guy the Avs hung onto even though he wasn't producing as well as Compher was, but had good underlying numbers, was Jost. And that of course is a guy that, despite good analytics, I was slagging mercilessly. I was way wrong there, even though I remain a tad skeptical as to whether or not he's the long-term solution at 3C. At the very least, he deserves a shot to prove it, and he shut me the hell up.

 

[Foppa2118]

All due respect, I don't know if I agree with your breakdown here.

Is there really any evidence that Burakovsky was picked because he'd be a good fit in the locker room? He was continually in the doghouse in Washington. Nichushkin had a downright toxic reputation both in the NHL and the KHL, the Avs decided to take a flyer on both, and we should be glad they did. Both were most assuredly analytics-informed decisions. I'm not so sure intangibles were a factor, however.

Conversely, I don't think Dubas just ignored intangibles and went only with what the numbers told him. If he did, he never would've signed John Tavares. He's an elite talent but also in his late twenties--that's a decision based on the leadership qualities he brings as much as it is his talent.

And I'll just reiterate--I don't think it's really accurate to call Chayka an analytics "whiz kid" because nothing he did in Arizona remotely resembled what an analytics-driven front office would do. Call Dubas that if you want, I guess, but he also proved this last offseason that he values "old school grit" a lot more than any of us, me included, ever thought. Really, the "poster children" of the analytics movement appear to be Tampa, Detroit, and Colorado.

I'd like to break down where I think Dubas failed when I have the time. Most of it has to do with goaltending and some key prospects that he just plain bet way too much on. Also, in hindsight, I think the Tavares signing was a huge mistake, despite the fact that he's played quite well for the Leafs. But I'll wait to do that when I have more time.

All due respect to you as well, but is there any less evidence for what I'm saying about Burakovsky than what you've been saying? These are all informed guesses we're making.

Any GM and pro scout worth their salt is gonna do their due diligence on potential new additions. They're gonna talk to agents, they're gonna talk to former teammates, former front office staff, and especially former trainers who know these guys the best, to get an idea of what type of person they are.

Otherwise you're just looking at numbers instead of asking yourself how the situation they were in led to those numbers, and if the situation you're trying to bring them into with your team will be different.

I think it's a pretty safe bet they correctly identified that the Avs team, that happens to have a Swedish captain, might be a good fit in the locker room for a skilled guy like Burakovsky who as opposed to other skill guys that another GM might bring in, doesn't really appear to be that high maintenance or a prima donna.

I think a smart GM who knows how personalities mesh together in the locker room and on the ice, might also have seen that the more introverted Burakovsky might actually become buds and get along well with the extrovert Kadri. Which we've heard is true, as all three of Naz, Saad, and Burky have talked about their success as a line partially stemming from being close off the ice as well.

All of this applies to Nuke as well. If he were just a former 1st round pick that struggled in Dallas, I doubt they'd have brought him in, but they identified that he'd be a good fit in the locker room. A guy the whole team would love, and would root for and help him to get closer to his potential. And from what I recall, despite his troubles, his teammates in Dallas all spoke pretty highly of him as a person. And I'm sure the Avs knew this and it played a big part in bringing him in.

I also think you're giving too much credit to how Dubas and Chayka slowly learned to value more than just the analytics. Them making decisions in their most recent years that may or may not have gone against the analytics (I'm taking your word on this because I'm not as familiar) isn't a sign that they valued this all along, it's a sign that they were too slow to realize it's importance, and probably hadn't fully addressed it.

Sakic and Colorado on the other hand were the opposite, as they were slow to realize the importance of analytics. They slowly began placing more importance on this around Roy's second year, and then started building up their analytics department.

They didn't have a full time analytics guy until they made Parnas full time in 2016, the summer before Bednar's first year. Then they brought in Dawson Sprigings in the 2017 off season. In the 2020 off season they brought in another guy in David Wood.

So over the course of the last 5 years they've gone from only using part time guys, to having a full time guy with a decent staff around him.

Sakic was a guy who knew what it takes to build a "team" but he had to learn to appreciate the value of analytics in this new NHL era.

Dubas is a young guy who doesn't have anywhere near the kind of experience Sakic has in the former department, but was well versed in analytics. So he's slowly been learning on the job what it takes to build a "team" of grown men with all the personalty quirks, egos, and character traits that involves.

It's just like with building a team in general. Some teams like the old Avs and current Leafs are going to start out with good offensive talent, and need to learn how to play well defensively before they can compete. Other teams are going to start out more defensive like LA and St Louis did, and they have to add more game breaking talent to be able to compete.

Then there's teams like Jarmo in Columbus who just go all in keeping a defensive coach past his shelf life, and with defensive/two way players at the expense of talent, both in the draft, and most of their roster decisions, and they end up a perennial bubble team at best.

That ended up being a much longer post than I originally planned, sorry.

 

[22FUTON9]

Caps are basically my second team but Burakovsky was clearly really liked in the locker room. He was almost treated like a nice little kid in Washington

 

[Pokecheque]

That's all well and good, I fully expect a team to do their homework--I just don't understand why we're thinking Toronto didn't. I think every team does research on a player they want to some extent.

Not gonna sit here and defend Kyle Dubas to the death. Like Steve Dangle and other have said, if you don't win then no one's really going to give a f*** about your process. Also, I've already gone on the record to say I think the Leafs went waaaaaaay overboard in loading up on grit and veteran presence--which just runs so counter to what we believe the Leafs are about under Dubas. That Habs team is pretty slow and ungainly, and yet it really felt like it was the Leafs who looked a lot slower. Apart from Spezza I don't think a single one of those old guys did a damned thing in the postseason.

Anyway, we'll be picking apart this corpse for a while. I'm somewhat intrigued to see what happens. I actually know someone in the Leafs organization, so I sure hope to hell it ain't a full housecleaning, but there will most definitely be changes coming.

 

[Pokecheque]

No you said Compher was contrary to the Statwhackers. Which he must be because he hasn’t worked out.

And the Avalanche must be using analytics because they are winning.

When ever a team gets the sheen of being new age in any of the sports and anything goes wrong it is never the analytics fault. Nope, the coach didn’t listen or the GM picked the wrong guy in rebellion to the intern with a math degree and when it’s fails even more spectacularly as with the cases of Dubas and Chayka the excuses fly even higher.

I mean Dubas CAN’T be an analytics guy. His team couldn’t get past the first round.

Yes. That is literally what I am saying. It's not the fault of a bunch of numbers gathered on a spreadsheet when a team fails. Whether they use those numbers or don't use those numbers, it's the fault of people. Adhering to them doesn't guarantee success.

And yes, Compher has bad advanced stats. Always has. Doesn't mean he's a bad player, on the contrary, he's a very good 4th line RW. But the Avs expected more development and utility out of him, and now that contract looks bad. I think if they had paid more attention to the stats, they may have avoided it and given him a one-year "show me" deal.

If you don't think that analytics played a big part in the Avalanche building their team to what it is now, then you're just deluding yourself. Was it the ONLY thing? No, but there's the other straw man anti-stats guys like you always like to gaslight everyone into believing, that stats guys think the stats are the end-all, be-all of team building. No one ever said that. No one, not Dubas, not Sakic, no one has ever built a team strictly according to what the analytics say. It's just a tool. The anger railing against them is just wasted energy. That's the central fallacy of your unbridled, unhinged hate of analytics. There's nothing to fight. It's a new tool that literally every team in the NHL is using nowadays, even the ridiculously old-school Anaheim Ducks have an advanced stats guy on payroll (how much he's listened to, I don't know, but he's there). You want to continue to be the old man yelling at the cloud, go ahead.

Dubas is an analytics guy. He's made some big mistakes, like any GM has, and some of them may have been driven by the numbers, I don't know. But he's not failing because analytics failed. He's failing because he made bad decisions, and ran into some bad luck. SOME of those bad decisions were recent, and they ran completely counter to his previous philosophies.

 

[Pokecheque]

Again I’m always amazed that statwhackers can’t answer simple questions like finding out if there is a correlation between size and durability or if gooning it up during a blowout loss has any effect on subsequent matchups. It’s always the new bell or whistle.

I'm honestly asking here...why is this a question you want advanced stats to answer? I'm not sure it can be answered through analytics. At least not yet.

My guess, no, there's no correlation. A guy like Ryan Wilson was a big as an ox, and made of tissue paper. Eric Lindros suffered through multiple concussions and other injuries throughout his career, he was gigantic. Meanwhile, a guy like Cliff Ronning lasted a good long time in the NHL and was around my size.

So no, I don't think there's a huge correlation between size and durability. Now...playing style? Yeah, I think so. Cam Neely didn't have a long career, played like a bull in a china shop (yes, part of that was that asswipe Ulf Samuelsson's doing), while Joe Thornton is still playing at 41 years of age, and one reason he got shipped outta Boston was because he refused to play like Cam Neely. Lindros was pretty reckless and of course, had a tendency to put his head down going up the ice. Also, smaller guys who played a rough style generally don't age well either. Ryan Callahan, Jordin Tootoo, Mike Richards, Steve Downie, all those guys did not have long NHL careers. Tyson Jost, who doesn't really initiate contact but takes an absolute BEATING every game he plays might be one of them...time will tell.

Also, some bodies are just able to withstand the rigors of a contact sport more than others and that doesn't appear to have much of anything to do with size. The late, great Marek Svatos would've been a superstar in the NHL had he just been able to stay healthy. Unfortunately, that ruined his career and it looks like it ultimately cost him his life.

 

[Hasbro]

I'm honestly asking here...why is this a question you want advanced stats to answer? I'm not sure it can be answered through analytics. At least not yet.

A) Would help drafting knowing how to rate size as an asset

B) Shut Size Queens

 

[Pokecheque]

A) Would help drafting knowing how to rate size as an asset

B) Shut Size Queens

I guess, maybe, keep an eye on the Leafs, and also the Oilers. Leafs appear to draft the guy they believe is the most skilled guy in the draft, no matter what. It appears they've gone for a lot of smaller players as a result. Conversely, Tyler Wright runs the drafts for Edmonton (also did the same for Holland in Detroit) and he likes to draft for size. Already Nick Robertson has suffered a major injury, so it ain't looking great there.

And this is kinda ancillary, but avoiding injury is sometimes a skill. I mentioned Cliff Ronning, he learned to roll off checks and credits that with some of his longevity. Cale Makar, for all his slipperiness, could learn to do something similar. There are times I think he doesn't do quite enough to avoid those big runs at him.

 

[MarkT]

I've missed the boat on the whole Toronto debate, but it looks like you guys were having a good one in here, and this is a good place for it.

On the whole analytics issue, two things are clear to me: the Avs 100% have always valued more than just analytics under Sakic. It's extremely clear that fit in the locker room and personality are important. Sakic 100% has the connections around the league to find out from multiple sources what a player is really like.

Dubas, meanwhile, is a pure analytics kind of guy. You can even tell this from his recent press conference, where he talked about the final three games as if they were no more important than the previous three games in terms of his evaluation of them. That's something a pure stats guy says. From everything I've seen from him his reputation as an analytics guy has been earned. he also seems like a decent human being who genuinely cares about his players - he emphasized several times what good people the likes of Matthews and Marner are.

But then how to explain his extremely non-analytics moves this season. Well, enter Brendan Shanahan. See, I suspect there has always been an internal debate in the Leafs about whether Kyle Dubas's methods are the way to go. Eventually they decided to let him have the reigns 100% - he was allowed to fire Babcock, bring in Keith, and build the roster exactly the way he wanted it. What was the result? Losing to Columbus in the qualifying round, and completely bombing game 5 (another elimination game). I think at this point Dubas was forced to admit his method didn't work, and Shanahan (and maybe others in the management group) convinced him of the value of grit and veteran leadership. But this isn't something that comes naturally to Dubas, so he ended up doing it poorly. Any team signing Joe Thornton would have to know he's going to make their team slower. But to also sign Wayne Simmons? Yikes. Oh, and let's get Bogosian too. Suddenly the Leafs go from a soft, young, fast team to an old, gritty, slow team overnight. Talented enough to do well in the regular season, but when those playoffs rolled around, the old guys were worn out and useless (outside of Spezza) and the kids were still not (mentally) tough enough.

This is why a general manager like Sakic will always be better than someone like Dubas. Sakic understands in his bones the importance of intangible things like grit, mental toughness, leadership, personality, and team chemistry, and what he didn't know he's learned in his years as GM. It's not as simple as just signing a bunch of old guys and assuming they'll provide the leadership in key situations. To be leaders, they need to also be able to lead on the ice. Someone needed to give Marner a smack and tell him to stop staring up at the sky and sulking every time things didn't go his way. Obviously, nobody did - or at least nobody Marner respected did.

 

[Nihiliste]

I don’t really understand what this argument is about. The idea that someone can be pro or anti analytics is frankly bizarre.

Is it useful to have more data? Maybe, if it helps you better understand reality. But taking the sea of available data and findings insights about the underlying reality is much more difficult than you’d think. You also don’t know if your insights are going to work out until you run them as an experiment over a solid sample size, which you often don’t get in a playoff run or even a season.

Ultimately, everything can and will be modeled including such seemingly intangible things like personality, chemistry, grit, hockey IQ, etc.

Analytics should be used anywhere that you can be reasonably confident that they help you make a better decision and they shouldn’t be used anywhere that you can’t. Basic stats like goals, points, hits, PIMs, height, weight, etc are all data themselves, being anti analytics really means you would have to be more in favor of random selection than looking at even basic stats. On the other hand, representing our current “advanced” metrics as anything other than tools to slightly improve the probability of making good personnel decisions in certain niche dimensions (eg zone exits/entries in the case of Burakovsky) is hubris.

The other place where I think analytics are helpful is in helping define in game tactics and franchise personnel strategy in context of results. Eg not overreacting to a lost series if your underlying metrics were good over a short sample size (2010 caps) or not overestimating how ready your team is to compete based on short term success (eg 13-14 Avs)

 

[Pokecheque]

Last two posts were great. I like this discussion.

I agree that Kyle Dubas may not in actuality be a good GM. He’s going to have to prove it in the next couple seasons. I don’t think his mistakes and failures are rooted in his background with analytics. I think those are mistakes any GM makes regardless of if they buy into the numbers or not.

The validity of analytics is a moot point. We know they have significant value to a team’s success. We also know they’re not the end-all be-all of it either. And the analytics community has never argued otherwise. To win it all, a team has to do a whole lot of things right, and they also have to get at least a little bit lucky.

 

[flyfysher]

I've missed the boat on the whole Toronto debate, but it looks like you guys were having a good one in here, and this is a good place for it.

On the whole analytics issue, two things are clear to me: the Avs 100% have always valued more than just analytics under Sakic. It's extremely clear that fit in the locker room and personality are important. Sakic 100% has the connections around the league to find out from multiple sources what a player is really like.

Dubas, meanwhile, is a pure analytics kind of guy. You can even tell this from his recent press conference, where he talked about the final three games as if they were no more important than the previous three games in terms of his evaluation of them. That's something a pure stats guy says. From everything I've seen from him his reputation as an analytics guy has been earned. he also seems like a decent human being who genuinely cares about his players - he emphasized several times what good people the likes of Matthews and Marner are.

But then how to explain his extremely non-analytics moves this season. Well, enter Brendan Shanahan. See, I suspect there has always been an internal debate in the Leafs about whether Kyle Dubas's methods are the way to go. Eventually they decided to let him have the reigns 100% - he was allowed to fire Babcock, bring in Keith, and build the roster exactly the way he wanted it. What was the result? Losing to Columbus in the qualifying round, and completely bombing game 5 (another elimination game). I think at this point Dubas was forced to admit his method didn't work, and Shanahan (and maybe others in the management group) convinced him of the value of grit and veteran leadership. But this isn't something that comes naturally to Dubas, so he ended up doing it poorly. Any team signing Joe Thornton would have to know he's going to make their team slower. But to also sign Wayne Simmons? Yikes. Oh, and let's get Bogosian too. Suddenly the Leafs go from a soft, young, fast team to an old, gritty, slow team overnight. Talented enough to do well in the regular season, but when those playoffs rolled around, the old guys were worn out and useless (outside of Spezza) and the kids were still not (mentally) tough enough.

This is why a general manager like Sakic will always be better than someone like Dubas. Sakic understands in his bones the importance of intangible things like grit, mental toughness, leadership, personality, and team chemistry, and what he didn't know he's learned in his years as GM. It's not as simple as just signing a bunch of old guys and assuming they'll provide the leadership in key situations. To be leaders, they need to also be able to lead on the ice. Someone needed to give Marner a smack and tell him to stop staring up at the sky and sulking every time things didn't go his way. Obviously, nobody did - or at least nobody Marner respected did.

I think it’s also a question of does a player really want to be a member of the Avs here in Denver? Under a salary structure? ROR, Stastny, Duchene, Panarin, and Hall are the notable players.

 

[Foppa2118]

I don’t really understand what this argument is about. The idea that someone can be pro or anti analytics is frankly bizarre.

Is it useful to have more data? Maybe, if it helps you better understand reality. But taking the sea of available data and findings insights about the underlying reality is much more difficult than you’d think. You also don’t know if your insights are going to work out until you run them as an experiment over a solid sample size, which you often don’t get in a playoff run or even a season.

Ultimately, everything can and will be modeled including such seemingly intangible things like personality, chemistry, grit, hockey IQ, etc.

Analytics should be used anywhere that you can be reasonably confident that they help you make a better decision and they shouldn’t be used anywhere that you can’t. Basic stats like goals, points, hits, PIMs, height, weight, etc are all data themselves, being anti analytics really means you would have to be more in favor of random selection than looking at even basic stats. On the other hand, representing our current “advanced” metrics as anything other than tools to slightly improve the probability of making good personnel decisions in certain niche dimensions (eg zone exits/entries in the case of Burakovsky) is hubris.

The other place where I think analytics are helpful is in helping define in game tactics and franchise personnel strategy in context of results. Eg not overreacting to a lost series if your underlying metrics were good over a short sample size (2010 caps) or not overestimating how ready your team is to compete based on short term success (eg 13-14 Avs)

The discussion isn't about pro analytics vs anti analytics. This is 2021 everyone is pro analytics now.

The issue is how much you rely on that to drive your decision making, and do you use that to drive the ideas for players you want to add, or do you use it to support your ideas of players you already thought would be a good fit for the team.

You can't really model for personalities and chemistry either. There's no data set you're gonna find that supports that in any sort of way. The only way to determine that is just old school hockey knowledge in knowing what makes a great team.

Sakic has lots of experience with that playing for bad teams, then some of the best teams ever, and then bad teams again during his career. Plus his stint as an advisor with PL his mentor. Dubas did not have that experience except as a GM with teenagers in junior which is totally different, because they have totally different personalities and egos.

 

[Nihiliste]

You can't really model for personalities and chemistry either. There's no data set you're gonna find that supports that in any sort of way. The only way to determine that is just old school hockey knowledge in knowing what makes a great team.

Human brains are just binary code systems. Neurons fire on or off. I guarantee you, everything that you think is an intangible human quality will be modeled within your lifetime. But probably more like within 20-25 years. Employers and military already do rudimentary personality screening and psychological team assessments - that stuff is just the very beginning.

 

[Richard88]

Human brains are just binary code systems. Neurons fire on or off. I guarantee you, everything that you think is an intangible human quality will be modeled within your lifetime. But probably more like within 20-25 years. Employers and military already do rudimentary personality screening and psychological team assessments - that stuff is just the very beginning.

Transhumanism...

 

[Pokecheque]

This is 2021 everyone is pro analytics now.

Oooooohhhhh no, that is absolutely not true.

 

[Foppa2118]

Oooooohhhhh no, that is absolutely not true.

Which NHL team is anti analytics? Absolutely every team knows it's importance by now.

 

[Foppa2118]

Human brains are just binary code systems. Neurons fire on or off. I guarantee you, everything that you think is an intangible human quality will be modeled within your lifetime. But probably more like within 20-25 years. Employers and military already do rudimentary personality screening and psychological team assessments - that stuff is just the very beginning.

The human body and brain is a hell of a lot more complicated than that. Emotions get out of whack based on millions of different scenarios (many of which are common in hockey) and it has the potential to hijack your logical thinking and decision making.

The microbiome in your gut is entirely different for each individual based on your genetics, your environment, and your diet, and this directly affects hormones like serotonin levels in the brain, which can affect your mood or lead to depression, which can obviously impact your ability to focus at any job, let alone a high speed, high pressure environment like NHL hockey.

You can't just sit there and think you can predict which neurons will fire on and off in a hockey game based on some data set and expect to draw any accurate conclusions from it, or be right any meaningful amount of time.

NHL teams would have to spend 100x more time than they do on skills, systems, scouting, etc combined to perform daily psychological tests on every player in the NHL to have even a very rudimentary idea of how two entirely different brains are going to interact with one another, or how they'll perform under stress, or how they'll get along with the coach, or if they'll put their ego aside and stick to the coaches system when they'd rather play another way.

And even then it's going to be much easier and probably more reliable for experienced hockey people to make reads on each player based on talking to everyone around them to get an idea of who they are and how they act, and relying on their decades of experience seeing an unofficial study play out in real time about what actually works and doesn't work, to build a team with good chemistry that will all buy into to how the coach wants to play.

 

[Pokecheque]

Which NHL team is anti analytics? Absolutely every team knows it's importance by now.

No I’m saying there are people HERE who are anti-analytics.

 

[Hasbro]

I don’t really understand what this argument is about. The idea that someone can be pro or anti analytics is frankly bizarre.

It’s not so much the numbers as it is the attendant ego boost and confirmation bias that comes with taking Bill James as your savior. Like a new found vegan or Ayn Rand aficionado. Leads to BS like crowning Chayka a Top 3 GM or thinking Dubas shouldn’t be traded with because he has some exclusive insight on players.

Dubas not finding efficient players and having to fill the roster with geezers who wanted play for the Leafs as a kid might not be because of him turning his back on analytics, it might be because he used analytics and wasn’t able to get the talent to compensate for his over paid roster in the first place. A we have an exhibit of this with his disastrous trade for Kerfoot and Barrie.

Watch the next old school organization that hires a whiz kid in their front office (Anaheim with “Corsi Swarm” Eakins seems like a likely candidate) a flip will be switched predicting a great future for the club, go on to credit any finds to the newfound philosophy, write off any failures as the old school guys not listening and finally when it comes crashing down say they weren’t really following the path in the first place.

 

[Nihiliste]

The human body and brain is a hell of a lot more complicated than that. Emotions get out of whack based on millions of different scenarios (many of which are common in hockey) and it has the potential to hijack your logical thinking and decision making.

The microbiome in your gut is entirely different for each individual based on your genetics, your environment, and your diet, and this directly affects hormones like serotonin levels in the brain, which can affect your mood or lead to depression, which can obviously impact your ability to focus at any job, let alone a high speed, high pressure environment like NHL hockey.

You can't just sit there and think you can predict which neurons will fire on and off in a hockey game based on some data set and expect to draw any accurate conclusions from it, or be right any meaningful amount of time.

NHL teams would have to spend 100x more time than they do on skills, systems, scouting, etc combined to perform daily psychological tests on every player in the NHL to have even a very rudimentary idea of how two entirely different brains are going to interact with one another, or how they'll perform under stress, or how they'll get along with the coach, or if they'll put their ego aside and stick to the coaches system when they'd rather play another way.

And even then it's going to be much easier and probably more reliable for experienced hockey people to make reads on each player based on talking to everyone around them to get an idea of who they are and how they act, and relying on their decades of experience seeing an unofficial study play out in real time about what actually works and doesn't work, to build a team with good chemistry that will all buy into to how the coach wants to play.

Honestly, I have no interest in arguing about this. Just wait and see

 

[Pokecheque]

That’s the problem with the “whiz kid” argument, whether it’s for or against analytics. They always get seen as a “test case” for the science, that debate’s already over and has been for years. People are waiting and hoping Dubas ultimately fails because that will somehow be an indictment of analytics. A bunch of his worst decisions were ones that ran counter to what the numbers say. But that’s fine, some on here will never be convinced and I’m not interested in convincing them.