Mirtle: Goaltending might be next frontier in analytics

The Globe and Mail’s James Mirtle joined TSN 1050 on Thursday morning for a fairly interesting discussion on hockey analytics.

With NHL teams snapping up analytics guys, might we see a stifling of information that has otherwise been readily available to the public?

“I think that’s started to happen this past season, where some teams – Like, Chicago is obviously doing things in analytics, but they won’t talk about it. The L.A. Kings are obviously doing some interesting things in analytics. I know even coach Darryl Sutter is involved in that, which would surprise some people. But they don’t talk about it. Dean Lombardi doesn’t want to talk about it. What Dean Lombardi says is ‘Too many of my ideas have been taken already.’

“So there’s real secrecy around analytics and it extends to the guys you were talking about off the top of the show that have just been hired by teams. I’ve tried to talk to Sunny Mehta, who the Devils hired as Director of Analytics. I’ve tried to talk to Tyler Dellow about him being hired by the Oilers. And there’s a gag order and these guys aren’t able to talk about what they’re doing. And that’s probably something that’s going to continue and you’re right, it’s going to hurt the flow of information probably to the media and probably to the public as teams try and look for this kind of statistical edge that they feel that their competition doesn’t have.”

Is the idea of information in the NHL going the route of snapping of the best and the brightest and keeping them to ourselves?

“Yeah. I mean, teams that have resources and pump resources into this are probably going to benefit. But we’re kind of right in the infancy of analytics in hockey where a lot of teams, they’re all using different things and they all have different ideas of what’s going to work and they’re hiring different companies or different people that have different ideas. So there’s no one ideology, there’s no one thing they’re chasing like maybe there was in baseball 10 years ago where there became this one idea. I mean, puck possession is obviously a big one, but there’s a lot of teams that don’t believe in puck possession and there’s some teams that are just getting on board with that now. It’s going to be really fascinating to see. I personally believe that teams like St. Louis and Chicago and L.A. – part of the reason they’ve been successful is that they’ve had this edge that no one talks about. I’ve personally talked to some of the people involved with them and some of the companies they’ve hired and it’s very, very interesting stuff that they’re into. And I think this summer was the first sign that other teams were catching on to what some of the better teams in the league have been doing.”

On how more teams will be going the ‘Kyle Dubas’ route.

“Yeah, I think the Penguins already kind of did that with Jason Botterill. I mean, he’s seen as the next GM and he’s a guy in his mid-thirties there. There are examples. I think Julien BriseBois in Tampa, who Steve Yzerman – that was the first hire he made when he went to Tampa – is kind of like that. He stole him away from Montreal and he’s another guy in his thirties when he was hired. You know, there has been that movement toward that. But Dubas is obviously an extreme example because he’s 28 years old and because of his background and because of how interested he is in analytics.

“I think you’re right. I think it is probably something we’re going to continue to and we’re going to move away from the former NHL player to maybe guys that are more educated and are more analytical-type thinkers.”

On what might be on the horizon for analytics:

“I think one of the things that I think is going to be next is quantifying goaltending and measuring goaltending and how that fits in. Because there’s been so much talk about possession, but goaltending is kind of another frontier and we don’t really have a lot of analytics to measure... You look at the analytics guys, and they still just use save percentage to measure goaltending and that’s the best number we’ve got. So I think that might be the next frontier. And how players on the ice affect the goaltender, how well they do. When Zdeno Chara is on the ice, is it easier to be Tuukka Rask than when Johnny Boychuk is on the ice. I mean, I think to me, and that comes back kind of to quality of competition, but it’s working in another factor as well.”

Part of the discussion involved Elliotte Friedman’s story this week on Vic Ferrari/Tim Barnes.