There's no doubt that Gillis was "progressive." He admitted himself in recent interviews that he's really into the human performance area of sports science. So definitely with Gillis you felt that if there is a stone to turn over he would likely turn it over.
With that said though, there's theory and then there's practice. In theory you want to "manage" the league and negotiate the best schedule for your team. In practice there's not much a team can do. Maybe one year we were happy with the schedule? You can look at the schedule and determine whether it's better to stay the night or fly in to the next city after the game. The science may be there but I'm not sure that there's a one size fit all: some players would have more energy if they flew in at night as opposed to morning and vice versa.
In theory giving players the tools to maximize their recovery and sleep makes them perform better. In practice, assistant captain Willie Mitchell just gave a rookie all the sleep monitoring watches and went out for a beer with the boys. Many old school coaches give players the day off from practice to help manage fatigue. In theory, using biofeedback and neurofeedback instruments to help a player better manage stress and focus their attention can help a player in critical game situation. In practice, the Sedins went into the Mind Room once and heard themselves scoring goals with the fans cheering on. In theory, a player who takes great care of their body and combined with human performance science training should prolong a player's career. In practice, father time waits for no one.
Of course some tools such as analytics and video have become common place. I'm certain that using video as part of coaching an a player's training is helpful. But at the same time, we do talk about Hockey IQ as something that isn't likely to improve. So if you have a player who is susceptible to making slow and poor decisions defensively and with the puck how likely are you able to significantly improve such weakness through breaking things down using video with that player?
I was and still am a big fan of Gillis. I think that with him heading Hockey Operations there was a sense that the team was constantly looking for ways to gain and edge and I'm sure most players appreciate that even if they didn't buy into it. I am not sure how much of the human performance/sports science stuff that Gillis implemented actually produced a positive result. There's a fine line between wanting to be the best and doing everything to perhaps gain a slight edge. It would be one thing to measure say Hughes shot velocity and point out ways he can improve it and having Hughes wear measurement probes at every practice. Even if all that process does help, like those sleep monitor bracelets, it may be more of an annoyance than the potential edge it can bring. That's how I feel anyways.
Re: theory vs. practice - totally agree. That said, a lot of what was done was trying stuff that was never tried in practice. It's super easy to look at something in retrospect and criticize or praise and very difficult to predict a priori. But, I loved that GMMG's team was willing to try and invest more in the team outside the cap restrictions. At the end of the day, some of it stuck around and got around the league - AV's quote is actually relevant on this note.
On specifics... I mean, I don't know how best to quantify how good or bad a schedule is but there seems to be some decent arguments on their first chat with the league being successful enough that other teams started to bug the head office on it. And on specifically player's energy - you can measure that after too, no? Maybe you do empirically find that there are 'night owls' vs 'early bird's on your roster - but you don't know until you try and measure the data.
WM's example of the rookie thing I think is an example of two things more than a criticism of the system. One, sometimes you do get overwhelmed and just don't want to do this annoying last thing - it's like getting a kid to eat vegetables. Second, I honestly take the story more as a way to haze a rookie and play a practical joke on the analytic team. I think that actually has a bonding effect and we know Mitchell, Kelser, Burrows and Bieksa were all practical jokers. Now, if there's evidence that they stopped doing this completely, that would be a much better quote rather than a one off joke.
Re: mind room - who knows, maybe Henrik thought it was bunk but it really worked well for... I dunno, Ehrhoff. Or maybe it stunk overall - still doesn't mean it wasn't worth a try when it was proposed by experts on sports psychology that were testing new ideas. Now, if something showed explicit negative results and they kept pushing it, 100% fair criticism.
On Hockey IQ - I somewhat disagree. I do think that there are players who naturally pick up the game more easily than others, but so much of it is still training for years and years until it's muscle memory & instinct. Now, how you go about it is certainly up to debate and how far any given player can get, but I don't think it's worthwhile to just brush it off because of established norms masquerading as wisdom. That's how you get superstition, not scientific-like methods to consistently improve. Further, developing the methods allows you to train others in the future better too, who might not be as gifted with some of that intuition or hockey IQ. Watching video, it might make you realize that you need to train that muscle memory of a specific skill more, no? It doesn't guarantee success, but a famous management idiom is that you can't improve what you don't measure.
Now, I reiterate, I am not defending any particular result or experiment, merely that the team was approaching it in a very analytical and 'off the board' approach for innovation. That I strongly support.
And, I do understand your point (which is far more reasonable than the OP lol) - it's completely possible that the 'remedy' is worse than the 'disease', be it over-analysis, poor analysis, opportunity costs on investments (especially time) and additional mental fatigue. That said, aside from some snarky anecdotes, which have equally strong counter anecdotes/opinions, these actions correlated with
dominating the league in 2010-2011.
Dominating. And short of bad luck with Malhotra and what I still contend to this day as terrible officiating - would've been a cup. Now correlation does not mean causation but how bad could these tools really be if we ended up being
that good? And with many of those tools still being used to this day, with a league that has transitioned very heavily into skill, speed and puck possession?
Lastly, this is just a tiny fraction of why a lot of us think highly of GMMG and poorly of GMJB - most of this is honestly not even the biggest contrast: the contracts. This mostly speaks to supporting a strong vision (which did help in signing many below market contracts) that many believe is superior to 'hurr durr size and leadership'. I'd happily eat my words if the latter vision produced a team that was anywhere close to GMMG's term - and also fully acknowledge that he did get great pieces left to him from Burke and Nonis.