Image an NHL coach. Windbreaker with a staff brand on the morning skate, enterprise apparel on the recreation. Frantically scribbling notes on a card or whiteboard, much less involved with a participant’s “underlying numbers” than with “grit and jam.” Eschewing analytics for “their intestine” throughout key selections.
Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan suits a few of these stereotypes — particularly the jacket with a brand at follow — however the two-time Stanley Cup winner can also be fascinated by superior stats and analytics.
Properly, to a degree.
“I am not going to lie: I am a skeptic. I ask one million questions of our inner analytics division. I do know I am a thorn of their facet,” Sullivan informed ESPN lately.
The quantity of data out there to teaching staffs has grown exponentially, due to developments in scouting, knowledge mining and evaluation. The trick, Sullivan mentioned, is determining which sources are correct and which statistics are most related to a training workers’s decision-making course of.
“The analytics world is monitoring a lot data always. I all the time liken it to a squirrel gathering nuts,” Sullivan mentioned. “If we will monitor data, we have to be taught one thing from it, so we are able to react to it. If we’re simply monitoring data for the sake of monitoring data, then let’s not waste our time. So I would like to chop the fats off the meat, so to talk. Let’s determine what’s related.”
Serving to the Penguins and different NHL groups trim the fats, because it had been: The SAP-NHL Teaching Insights app.