Question: Sports Analytics / Weisbrod / Burke

[Dr. Pepper]

Hey guys - what's your take on this? Sports is undergoing an explosion of stats and information to base decisions on, and teams need to be cognizant of that and harness it to their advantage. My understanding was that John Weisbrod was spearheading this department while he was here - so my question is, does anyone know if Burke is downplaying this kind of analysis by firing him (and I have no idea about his overall performance, so have no opinion on the firing per se), or are other personnel in the Flames now responsible for this? The article that got me thinking about this was from Men's Journal - some quotes:

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To stubborn naysayers or those who simply find it confusing, Daryl Morey, GM of the Houston Rockets and the first analytics adherent to helm a non-baseball American sports franchise, bluntly defends the use of data: "It works. The bottom line is that sports are about decision-making, and the science shows over and over that if you use objective data and analysis in decision-making, you make better decisions."
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"Like it or not, big data is driving the world," says <Shane> Battier <of the Miami Heat>, "from the stock market to agriculture to entertainment and sports. The more data you have, the better served you are. That's why I think teams are investing in analytics personnel – and if they don't, they're going to get left behind."
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Story: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/...e-nba-20131220

[PeteMoss]

The Flames had a video guy doing analytics and it was basically the PUCKS system which is a video system. The Flames weren't an analytic team under Feaster/Weisbrod and they won't be under Burke.

Using the data is fine but you have to figure out why it works. Hockey is the most difficult sport to pull data for as well. Baseball is the easiest since its a large set of one on one battles, basketball and football are more difficult but they for the most part have set offensive and defensive possessions. Basketball is basically a rotation of 24 second possessions and football has clear offensive/defense possessions.

Hockey is entirely fluid which is why most of information produced so far has been simplistic that you don't really need data to prove it (i.e. more shots = good, carrying it in is better than dumping it in)

[Boreal]

I find hockey analytics a little more troublesome than other sports, due to the intimidation factor with fighting and other associated intangibles that are harder to quantify empirically. I think there is value in the analytics, but they still need to support traditional scouting.

[Flames89]

Great question.
I have to believe there is a place for them and that ignoring it would be ignorant.
However, hockey is one of the most pure "team games" around. Coaches and systems are key. One superstar won't make you a winner and a bunch of defensive pluggers doesn't mean u will have lowest GA.

[GGG]

All basketball arenas are being installed with cameras that track player movements, velocities, acceleration. They will track every attribute of a player. This will revolutionize advance stats as you have all of the data instead of just whats being recorded by a human tracker. I think that the NHL rinks that share areanas will have a big advantage if they use this tech.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...cal-revolution

[TurnedTheCorner]

Originally Posted by GGG

All basketball arenas are being installed with cameras that track player movements, velocities, acceleration. They will track every attribute of a player. This will revolutionize advance stats as you have all of the data instead of just whats being recorded by a human tracker. I think that the NHL rinks that share areanas will have a big advantage if they use this tech.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...cal-revolution

The info you posted is in the original article.

[CSharp]

Here's the stats that tells if you're successful or not: Score more than opponents most of the time and your Goals For is more than Goals Against in a season, then you're good. All other stats are just analyzing individual efforts and can vary from game to game.

[Badgers Nose]

I like these discussions. These arguments happened in every sport where analytics took over, often the same arguments were made about speed, fluidity and intimidation.

Everything can be expresses as a number, you just need the right formula/algorithm. Perhaps they have not figured it out yet, but eventually it will be possible to express NHL player current state and potential as a number.

[TurnedTheCorner]

Originally Posted by Badgers Nose

I like these discussions. These arguments happened in every sport where analytics took over, often the same arguments were made about speed, fluidity and intimidation.

Everything can be expresses as a number, you just need the right formula/algorithm. Perhaps they have not figured it out yet, but eventually it will be possible to express NHL player current state and potential as a number.

[cral12]

Mike Colligan in 2011 took an in depth look at Flames hiring of stats/analytics guy, Chris Snow.

Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmo...o-new-nhl-era/