The numbers still don't add up for many skeptical NHL players
Jets star Scheifele dismisses the merits of analytics as just `a bunch of hogwash'
It's 2051. Tesla has just announced its new flying car to great enthusiasm, although there are production delays. Charlie Woods has won the Masters, his 15th major championship, tying him with his father. Tom Brady, at 73 years old, has come out of retirement to sign with an NFL expansion franchise based in Munich. (He was retired for just two seasons, having won his 21st Super Bowl in 2049.)
And then, at a random NHL news conference, a star player will declare that he doesn't believe in analytics.
The 2021 version of this occasional and yet reliable event happened late last week, when Mark Scheifele of the Winnipeg Jets popped off on the merits of statistical evidence.
“I don't have much time for analytics,” he said. “I'd rather just watch the game and tell you if a guy played well or not.”
Then, the kicker: “You know, the analytics (are) a bunch of hogwash in my mind.”
Very fitting that his resolutely old-school take on the game included such an old-time insult. And so began another round in the endless debate about math and hockey.
Scheifele's opinion is far from uncommon among his peers, but when I hear a player say something like that, my reaction is to wonder what exactly his coaches tell him about analytics. How is it that, many years after the value of deeper statistical analysis gained widespread acceptance in the professional front office ranks, players still talk about it like it's some mysterious witch's brew that can't be trusted? Why do they so often sound like management is using their secret analytic tools to tell them that good players are not, in fact, good? Why so suspicious?
The thing I don't understand about the pervasiveness of this attitude is that the root of hockey analytics is pretty simple. The most important thing in the sport, goals, is a product of a lot of randomness. If Team X beats Team Y by a score of 2-1, that says nothing about which team controlled the play, created more scoring chances, or prevented them. Analytics provide an extra level of information, which is particularly useful if a team's results over a stretch of time are out of line — in a good or bad way — with its overall performance.
On an individual player level, analytics can show that a skater is controlling play better than goals for and against might indicate, or they could also show the opposite. A defenceman might be on the ice for two goals against, one a softy courtesy of the goalie, the other a weird deflection. That's going to look like a bad night, but if his pairing had a clear shot-differential advantage, then his coaches would be theoretically happy with his overall play on the evening.
The idea is that a better statistical understanding of a team or a player provides a more accurate picture of their underlying play. Why be skeptical about that?
Which leads me back to my question: What is it that NHL organizations are telling players about analytics? Do they talk about things like shot differential so much that players begin to tune it out? This would be a surprise. Coaches talk about effort and compete level and puck battles and taking away the opponent's time and space. I can't imagine they do that in public and then immediately start talking about Corsi and PDO in the dressing room when the cameras are off.
More likely is that many players have such a limited understanding of hockey analytics because it's a tool primarily used by the front office. Players have to execute the systems the coaching staff has implemented, they have to follow instructions that they have been given, while still allowing for instinctive and creative play. No one would tell them to make sure they throw lots of pucks in the direction of the net to get their Corsi rating up. A player will have impressive underlying statistics if he's doing what his coaches demand on a well-designed team. Put another way, good analytics are a product of effective play, but you wouldn't want a bunch of players to go out and simply try to manipulate shot differential in their favour.
I wonder if there's something else at play, too, and it's more about human nature. Hockey players know about goals and assists, and have known about them from the moment they started playing. It's what they have always been trying to do: score goals, and don't allow the other team to score them.
Maybe someone who has been motivated by that all his hockey-playing life just doesn't want to hear that it's the underlying statistics that are more telling.