Confirmed with Link: Sabres hire a VP of Hockey Strategy and Research

[CrazyPsycho]

The Sabres franchise now enters the 21st century lol.

Nightingale also getting a promotion it looks like.

Click to read more...

 

[Taro Tsujimoto]

Ace Ventura: Sabres Detective?

 

[BloFan4Life]

The Sabres franchise now enters the 21st century lol.

Nightingale also getting a promotion it looks like.

More analytics, which makes sense if you plan on having less scouts.

Also, I think Nightingale always had that title.

Director of Analytics & Assistant Director of Scouting Jason Nightingale

Staff Directory // TEAM

They added amateur to his title but he was already the assistant director of scouting.

 

[My Cozen Dylan]

Excellent news. Keep it coming.

 

[Rastin]

Any word on this guy? I haven't been impressed with the Penguins moves in recent years, were they influenced by him?

I guess I shouldn't nitpick, this was a much needed move. Hopefully they got the right guy for the job.

 

[Fezzy126]

Wow, awesome hire!

 

[boots electric]

rolling my eyes at yet another Pittsburgh hire, but it's a promising sign nonetheless

 

[TheMistyStranger]

At least they're filling out management

 

[BloFan4Life]

Any word on this guy? I haven't been impressed with the Penguins moves in recent years, were they influenced by him?

I guess I shouldn't nitpick, this was a much needed move. Hopefully they got the right guy for the job.

A Swissvale native and Woodland Hills graduate, Ventura previously co-founded the hockey analytics website war-on-ice.com before joining the Penguins in a part-time role. In addition to his work with the Pens, Ventura spent two years as a visiting assistant professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University from 2015-17. Ventura has earned a Bachelor's (2010; Computational Finance and Statistics), a Masters of Science (2011; Statistics) and PhD (2015; Statistics) degrees from Carnegie Mellon.

Penguins Hire Sam Ventura as Director of Hockey Research

 

[joshjull]

 

[Fezzy126]

I posted this a while ago in the Karmanos thread:

We don't necessarily know who was involved in those moves or how much those teams embraced their analytics departments. It's also one of the reasons I didn't want Rutherford around, because he was situated above Karmanos and tends to have a more old school point of view.

What I do know is that one of Karmanos' first hires was Sam Ventura (Co-founder War-on-ice), and as of right now Ventura appears to be a rising star in the hockey ops world.

While I'm usually opposed to former Penguins hires, for now I'm taking a glass is half full perspective. He doesn't appear to be in that same circle of cronies that the Pegulas were previosuly associated with, and he knows how to identify talent in people that aren't in the old boys club.

I've been begging for a hire like this for years now, pretty amazing that Karmanos was able to get Ventura to come along too.

 

[joshjull]

 

[joshjull]

 

[jc17]

He was one of the War-on-ice creators before it was shut down upon his hire. This is great to see. No silver bullets but this should hopefully eliminate one of our glaring blind spots that, whatever nightingale was doing alone, wasn't covering

 

[Zman5778]

I know some will shrug this move off as "yet another Pittsburgh guy".

This is a true stats guy. HUGE step forward for the organization.

 

[Sabre the Win]

I feel like we've been being spoon fed the word analytics for the last 10 years. Every GM including Botterill mostly kept using the word analytics when in their introductory hirings and yet we still traded for terrible players.

Same shit different toilet.

 

[enthusiast]

Every bit helps

 

[Reddawg]

We did a thing and did it right? What org page did I stumble into?

 

[CrazyPsycho]

I'm imagining having this guy under Ralph.

"Very nice work, keep it up", while completely ignoring the information and putting Skinner with Lazar

 

[Fezzy126]

I feel like we've been being spoon fed the word analytics for the last 10 years. Every GM including Botterill mostly kept using the word analytics when in their introductory hirings and yet we still traded for terrible players.

Same shit different toilet.

1. Botterill was a former hockey player with an MBA
2. Ventura has a PHD in statistics from Carnegie Mellon

These are not remotely the same.

 

[Ace]

I feel like we've been being spoon fed the word analytics for the last 10 years. Every GM including Botterill mostly kept using the word analytics when in their introductory hirings and yet we still traded for terrible players.

Same shit different toilet.

so you are comparing the actual hiring of someone who works in the field to the lip service of hearing the word but then seeing zero usage?

cool.

 

[joshjull]

I assume with Nightingale shifting to a full time scouting role that means analytics will play a big part there.

 

[Deevo]

More analytics, which makes sense if you plan on having less scouts.

Also, I think Nightingale always had that title.

Director of Analytics & Assistant Director of Scouting Jason Nightingale

Staff Directory // TEAM

They added amateur to his title but he was already the assistant director of scouting.

If I'm understanding Elliot's tweet, I believe this means that they are removing Nightingale's title of Director of Analytics and keeping his title of Assistant Director of Scouting.

 

[jc17]

I feel like we've been being spoon fed the word analytics for the last 10 years. Every GM including Botterill mostly kept using the word analytics when in their introductory hirings and yet we still traded for terrible players.

Same shit different toilet.

I don't know if I agree.

The word came up from time to time, but I never really remember a strong commitment to it. The media rarely asked about how the team uses analytics which didn't help.

Im pretty sure Ralph's only mention of analytics was in regards to the potential for injury prevention and stuff, not purely hockey related stuff.

 

[Gurglesons]

As a Penguins fan I’m really worried what this means for our organizational view point on analytics moving forward. So take that with a grain of salt, but Sam should be a GM someday.