The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 97: La Belle Province

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

Andrew Berkshire and Jack Han join the show to discuss how the Montreal Canadiens will need to adjust to life without PK Subban, weigh the pros and cons of Shea Weber's game, and look at how video work and data is the next frontier for analysis. Here’s a quick rundown of the topics covered: 1:00 Using video analysis to evaluate systems 8:00 The PK Subban trade 16:30 Optimizing Shea Weber's talents 22:00 Michel Therrien's Zone Exit strategy Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and can also be streamed right here on the website. Make sure subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new shows as they’re released, and also take a minute to leave a glowing review. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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And joining me in studio is Andrew Berkshire and Jack Khan. Jack, Andrew. What's going on, guys? Not much. How about you? Not much. I should lay out the scene right here. I know since this isn't a video podcast, we're recording this.

I don't know, what would you describe this, Jack? It's like a conference room. Study room? Yeah. Study room in a library? So we're at the McGill Faculty of Commerce right now, which is where I went to school back in the day in the middle of construction season. So it's nice to be indoors and have.

a little AC going on. Yeah, and yeah, we're recording this on, it's a Monday, August 1st. Jeez, it's already August. Yeah, it's already August. All season's flying by. Our season starts in 24 days. Yes.

When does the World Cup start? I feel like that's when our hockey season starts. It's like September 17th, I think. I remember when I looked, it was way later than I thought. Because I was like, usually training camp starts around there. But I guess they're just like pushing the season back a week or two. Yeah, it's going to be a really condensed season two, I believe. but I think it's going to be pretty hectic.

All right. So for people who don't know, Andrew, you obviously. You're one of my co-workers at SportsNet. And Jack does a bunch of work at ISB Nations, has eyes on the prize, and you do some work at hockey graphs. And I guess most relevant to our discussion right now is you actually also work here at McGill with the women's hockey team.

Yeah, exactly. So I take care of video and analytics for the Miguel Martlett's women's hockey program. So in the past two years, we've been consistently ranked top five in the CIA We finished winners up at nationals last year. And going back to, I think, 99, I think we have, I mean, I wasn't there for any of them, actually, but we have quite a few national championships under our head coach, Peter Smith.

Yeah, that was a nice little humble brag there. All right, so I think where I want to start this discussion is, Jack, you had this presentation at the Vancouver Hockey Analytics Conference back in, I think it was April, where you were sort of trying to instill some of the stuff that you've come across in that job that you just described, where you do a lot of video stuff and then you interact with the coach and the team in terms of optimizing, I guess, personnel usage and sort of looking for trends and stuff like that. So I think that is a really interesting place for us to start because I've also done a lot of video work myself with the NHL product, but I always wonder not having necessarily worked hands-on with someone like that before, like, the process of you noticing something on tape and then actually, seeing that play out on the ice when you tell the coach or you alert them to certain trends that

you see. Right. Well, when somebody asks me what I do for Peter and the rest of coaching staff, I mean, my general answer is I do computer stuff for Peter. So Peter is an older person, an old school coach. You're saying he's bad at computers. Sometimes. Sometimes.

But my overall philosophy is I want to reduce Peter's workload. Right. So my point is not like I'm going to. give him some numbers and then tell them to do this and that. But it's just how, like my, um, the idea behind what I do is how can I help Peter sleep better at night and sleep more hours because coaches don't sleep a lot. Right. You guys don't know.

And a lot of it comes down to preparing his video for him and also, um, distilling that into, um, statistical insights, right? So, you know, things as simple as, you know, play her more, play her less. Don't play her with her. Like that's the level of, um, information I would have given. Right. So it would be that and perhaps two or three relevant clips,

10 seconds long for every game, let's say. Right. That's a very small quantity of information, but that's what we strive for. Right. So do you ever find yourself interacting with actual players themselves in terms of stuff you've seen on tape, or do you let the coaching staff actually handle most of that?

No, Peter likes to do that. So generally I wouldn't do that. Well, so the thing that I find interesting in terms of, You know, it's one thing for us, for example, to see, notice, let's say a certain player struggles with a breakout scheme out of their own zone or a certain player gives up their own blue line a lot on defense, right? And you notice that and then actually sort of kind of alerting the players to that. And having them target those certain deficiencies in the opponent's game, I always wonder, hockey is such a fast game. And we always hear that as like a criticism of the work we do sometimes. Like, oh, like, you know, it's not like baseball or just one-on-one and you can kind of isolate stuff like that.

it's so fast and free-flowing, and I wonder whether you can actually target specific traits like that to actually optimize how the players are playing. I think we can, but it's a gradual process, right? It's, you know, if you say that your defenseman doesn't play a very good gap, and it shows up, let's say the zone entries against or the shots against, maybe he doesn't know or she doesn't know, and then the first step is letting that person know. Right. But the second step, which is to improve that, that could take months, years.

Maybe it's never going to happen. So, I mean, knowing it's half the battle. Right. Yeah. And then what you do with that information, obviously, is the next step. I mean, Andrew, you work with sport logic data a lot, and you're sort of, you guys are tracking all this stuff that we've never even really thought about before. I mean, like, I always, it's really cool and it's definitely descriptive.

It tells us a lot about what happened. but I wonder about whether the next step is how we use that data to actually influence stuff moving forward. Yeah, it's really a matter of figuring out what statistics are important, and specifically I find breaking it down into different portions of the game. Like I looked recently at the way that Markov and Suban defended entries against, and one of them likes to step up in the neutral zone a lot, and that happened to be Markov. People think PK is the more aggressive player, but the way that they kind of worked it out either with each other through the coaching staff

was that Markov can't really skate that well. So the way the Canadians usually play defending zone entries isn't to step up on the blue line. It's to try to stick with players who are attacking by skating backwards and closing lanes. That didn't work for Markov. So he decided that he was just going to step up on the blue line, force more dump-ins, and then PK would be the guy who would go back, shake off the fore-checker, grab the dump-in, and then break out. And it worked really, really well.

only pairing that really found success that way so you can see how those things break down but i don't think we're there yet and like uh you need to up this stat in order to get more wins right it's more figuring out i think you can find out more from system about systems and the way that how like characterize how different players have success right then we can see what drives success right and then put those players in those positions to exceed based on similar characteristics or one guy's really good at something the other guy's like what i suggest It's suggested was that, like, Shea Weber cannot do P.K.'s job with Markov because he doesn't have the agility that P.K. has. He can shake off four checkers physically, but he can't then break out and then take the puck out of the zone. It's not one of his skills. Right. So if Shea Weber were to play the Markov role in a different pairing with, say, and Nathan Bolle, that could see some reasonable success. And Jeff Petrie has the skills to play with Markov. The problem is that those two together haven't had the greatest history. So that's, again, that's one part of the game to find. zone entries, right? So there's all this other stuff that you have to look at to figure out

what would be the best pairings. But for that specific thing, those pairings should work. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing right now that we went nearly 10 minutes without actually. I mean, we just started now kind of dipping our toes into the Sub-Ban and Weber trade, but it's kudos to us for showing that restraint. But now that we're there, let's get into it. I know that you guys have both written about that and you both obviously living here in Montreal I'll follow PKK Suban very closely and developed some emotional ties and enjoyed watching him play, of course, and you've both written about the trade as well. So I guess let's get into it a little bit here now. I think Jack's less emotional than me. I'm the emotional

one. Jack's the cold steely eyes. You're just calculating his thoughts right now? Usually, but I have a couple personal anecdotes about Suban that I can try it later on. but I think that if you say that P.K. Suban has character issues. You're A. very wrong, and two, you're placing emphasis on the wrong things. So I used to work from the Canadians in their marketing and PR department, and so I worked hands-on with Sub-Band for about a year. So we saw each other maybe two or three times a week during the whole season. But was he late every time?

Looking back, I don't know, but what I do. What I do know is during that entire year, I've never seen or heard Sue Mann say a bad word to anyone about anything, ever. Right. I couldn't say the same things about some of his teammates. Right. Well, I mean, Andrew and I were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, but it is interesting about how, like, this whole, he's a problem in the room and stuff. And you'd think, like, if you were one of the players, like, just like, you know, the season is so long and you have these ups and downs.

And, of course, when you put 20 or so guys in a locker room like that, every day, of the year, every day of the week for the full year, you know, there's going to be clashes of personalities and stuff. But you'd think, like, during, like, a losing streak or something like that, like, having a guy like Suban who just seems so cheery and uplifting would be only positive. I don't know. That entire angle to me just seems so, like, far-fetched that I don't even think we should spend that much more time on it because we should talk about, like, the on-ice product

more than actual, these wild and tangibles that I don't think anyone really believes it is sort of, like, a little bit of straw man. I think, okay, let's talk about the on-ice fit because, Jack, you wrote about sort of Shea Weber in terms of what he can and can't do. And I thought it was really interesting what you were talking about, like, he's good at this stuff, but then he's really bad at this stuff. And I don't know, like, do you want to just dive into a little bit of what you were writing about him? I mean, I believe that Shay Weber is a good player with a lot of quality tools.

I just think that Suban has a much better toolbox. Yes. Like the one, like the only bad thing I could say about Suban in terms of the way he plays the game is, I believe he's not making the most of his shot on the power play. Yeah. He likes to set up on the blue line. He gets blocked a lot. He doesn't shoot from close in enough.

Whereas Weber doesn't have that problem. Like Weber's, Weber has an excellent shot. It's better than Suban's as it is, but I think... He pinches much deeper. Yeah, like the software, the decision-making behind using his shot is...

In Weber's case, I believe it is better. Yeah. My one question with Sub-Ban, though, is in regards to his shot, is he strafing out further because he's overconfident in his... his shot getting through, or is this a more conservative approach because the coaching staff doesn't want him pinching deep because he's perceived as risky? And if he pinches deep and

his shot gets blocked, he's, you know, out of it. And Markov can't catch the guys on the 2-on-1, right? Like, Markov cannot be your last man back. Right. So P.K. kind of has to, by default, be the last man back on the Canadian's power play. I wonder if this year in Nashville playing with a Roman Yosie or Ryan Ellis if we're going to see him pinch a lot deeper. Because I know watching him for the Canadian. junior team or for the Hamilton Bulldogs or even with Jacques Martens, Canadians, he pinched a lot deeper on the powerplay.

And actually, like, his less productive years, his first two seasons, he had more powerplay goals per year than, like, the last two years. Right. Which is kind of crazy. His assists are off the charts now, but his shooting has dropped off for whatever reason. Right.

I think it's shot distance, and specifically the Canadians pushing him more onto the right side on the power play, which takes away his one-timer. Yeah. I mean, I think all the Rios are pretty high on Suban in this room. I'm more interested in the Weber angle, honestly, because I think that anyone that's viewing this trade from a rational perspective using stuff that's rooted in reality

realizes that Suban's the better player right now and he's younger and he doesn't have that terrible contract that Weber has. So, I mean, it's pretty clear that, you know, it's sort of spilled milk at this point for the Canadians. You're going to want to optimize it. I do, I mean, Jack, you wrote that Shea Weber, you still think that he's like a really good player at his position, but you wonder whether the position he's playing still really even exists anymore in NHL, which I think was a really interesting way to put it, because you do see some of this stuff. I think opposing players are pretty clearly intimidated by him

when he's in his defensive zone. And you have to believe them when they say that. Yeah. And I think just from watching it, when you see guys approaching him sometimes, it's like they sort of hear his footsteps a little bit. Like they sometimes make a decision a little bit quicker than you'd think they would otherwise against a different defender.

And that's a real skill. But then you also noted that sometimes he kind of, would prefer just laying back and trying to throw that hit, which gives the guy an opportunity to make a play when he enters the zone, and the smart players can make those decisions in fractions of seconds and hurt him that way, and by the time he goes to hit him,

the puck's not even there anymore, so it's kind of... I mean, I wouldn't say that Weber is not a smart player. I honestly don't know him and the way he plays well enough to say that, but just perhaps that his approach to the game doesn't drive results as much as you would think. Like that's how it would put it.

I think he knows where his skill set is and plays very tightly within that, but perhaps too tightly. Like if you watch Game Taped for Nashville, he just does not like touching the puck at all in the defensive zone. It's really weird. Like he just does these little short passes to Yosie all the time. Right. And whenever he does try like a breakout pass,

it's like a 50% chance it's intercepted. He's just not very good at it. It's like maybe it's to his benefit that he's so con. cautious at not playing the puck, right? And he plays, he does play very well without the puck. And you can't argue with players that they say, like, they don't like playing against Shea Weber. I wouldn't like to get checked by Shea Weber either.

I wouldn't like to get my face smashed into the glass like Hendricks Zetterberg. But at the same time, like, I know Mark Sheifley got a lot of press this summer going on a radio station, I believe in Toronto, saying that he would much rather have Shea Weber on his team because he hated playing against him. And then I looked up the stats, and it turned out that against him, you know, Shea Weber head to head, Mark Sheifley had like an 85% goals 4 percentage. And again, Sue Ben, he was like 50%. So it was like, okay, I guess you don't want to get hit, but you still have better results.

Right. You know, like, so sometimes I think player opinion is not exactly trustworthy. Well, and I think I saw a friend of the podcast, Mike Johnson talking about us on Twitter with back and forth with Patrick O'Sullivan, where he was saying that like... Oh yeah, O'Sullivan kind of buried himself there. Yeah, I was like, and Mike Johnson was like, yeah, well, I used to play. And when I used to play, the players I kind of dislike playing against the most were the fast ones that, you know, just always kept you on your heels and you didn't know, like, what was going on. And it was so hard to keep up with. And it makes sense that obviously there's like the physical component to it and you don't really want to get beat up a lot. But I mean, a lot of these guys like dive face first in front of flying pucks and stuff. Like, and, you know, it's the whole thing about enforcers where it's like, oh, they're going to, you know, police the game and protect guys because of fear. It's like a lot of these guys are, you know, getting paid to be out there and put their body in harms away. Like, I don't think they're going to be these. that scared of it. Yeah, I feel like the fear component is a lot smaller than people think. And like, even if you hate necessarily playing against the Shea Weber, you're not going to

be afraid of them unless, like, in a seven-game series, I could see physicality having a bit more of an impact because, like, attrition over the seven-game series. Yeah. But especially in the regular season, like, whenever people would talk about, you know, you've got to get an enforcer to stop the Matt Cooks and Brad Marchons of the world. If Matt Cook and Brad Marshall were afraid of enforcers, they wouldn't be in the NHL. Yes. You know, like, Matt Cook did fight Evander Cain.

got one punched, you know, out. And then the next game he was back, he probably gave somebody a headshot. Because he doesn't care. Yeah. That's how he earns his money. And Brad Marchand is going to slew foot and clip guys in the knees constantly, and he's not afraid of anybody coming after. Right.

And we see all the time with some of these dirty hits, it's like, you know, you screen grab it. And it's like, they have all these like Milan Lujid's on ice when a guy gets concussed. Exactly, right? Yeah. So, I don't know. What, if you're running the Canadian. What are you doing with Shea Weber to put him in the best situation to succeed?

It's tough because I think the problem the Canadians have right now is that they don't have a number one defenseman anymore because I don't think Shea Weber is that, but they kind of have no choice. So if Nathan Bulleyu can't fit with him, it's going to be really hard to maximize that lineup because Mark Barbario is a really good player in terms of driving possession and driving offense. but against top competition he just gets slaughtered because he has like his turnover rate is obscene. Right. Like he does so much stuff with the puck and it's exciting and cool to watch, but like every second play he's turning it over. Yeah.

It's crazy. So he can't play that job with Shea Weber. Markov isn't a first pairing defenseman anymore without P.K. Suban carrying him around. Jeff Petrie might be their best even strength defenseman, which is kind of tough for him because he, you know, struggled in that job in Edmonton. There's a bit more support here, but I don't think that there's any way that they can structure that defense that's actually going to be better than last year.

I think that they'll have to just kind of divide the matchups between the three pairs as best as they can, you know, like not overload one with the top matchups and rely on their deeper forwards this year and more carry price. I feel like their possession numbers are going to drop pretty bad this year because in terms of at Sport Logic, we count something called possession driving plays, which I'm trying to get them to rename transition plays. Right. But it's basically moving the puck up the ice with control, right? So controlled exits, controlled entries, carries across the red line, all that kind of stuff.

Neutral zone passes forward. Right. So the best forward for the Canadians of doing that last year was Lars Eller. The best defenseman was P.K. Subat. So they lost both those guys. And Andrew Shaw is terrible at it. He doesn't carry the puck ever, which no disrespect to Andrew Shaw. If I played with Patrick Kane or Jonathan Taves or Marion Hosa,

I wouldn't carry the puck me. But I don't think that he's capable of doing that at the same level that Lars Ziller was. He's just not the same skater. He doesn't have the size of the reach, the stick handling. And Che Weber can't do it at the same rate as PK. So I think they're going to suffer pretty severely in terms of possession. So are you like, are you guys emotionally bracing yourselves for like the reality that Carrie Price might come back and be really good and none of this might matter.

And then people are going to be like, oh, like where are your stats at now, you nerds? Yeah, I mean, that's going to happen no matter what, right? I mean, Kerry could have a tougher year, though. I mean, he hasn't played for a calendar year, so we'll see about that. And he could, I mean, that injury, that's a little bit worrying. You never know if it's going to come back. He's had knee problems for four years now. I mean, it's tough carrying the full franchise on your back.

Big time. Jack, where's your head out? You're just kind of picking your spots here. I would agree with everything that Andrews says. But there's also another thing that I want to add is, you know, we talk about emotions, and we also talk about the eye test being not very reliable or certain stats being more repeatable and more relevant than others. And working with the team and working with high-level athletes in two sports because my full-time job is in tennis. But in my opinion, the biggest source of noise, which prevents objective analysis of what's going on, is our emotions.

So I'm just very worried when, you know, front office makes a lot of emotionally based decisions. Yes. I worry about the outcomes. Yeah. I'll just leave that that. Yeah. I worry about that. Radjelov seems good, though, at least.

Yes. We'll see if he's his greatest build. I've talked to a bunch of players or people who watch, like, KHL. And they're, like, legit Rajelov is the third best Russian. the world. It's Ovechkin, Malkin, Radjolov. I was like, all right. All right. We'll see how that works out. Yeah. If he's actually still that good at 29, like, the Canadians could be all right, you know, like to have that depth of Patraini on the first line, Radjolov on the second line. Well, I think that was a no-brainer kind of roll of dice just because it is such a...

A one-year deal. And, you know, if the Canadian, if, for whatever reason, the Canadians struggle and they're out of the playoff mix, I'm sure. And he's scoring a lot of goals that becomes an asset you can at least get picks for or something like that. So it's... It seemed like a wise investment. And I think that's kind of the weird thing about Bergevin is that, like, in a lot of ways, like most GMs probably wouldn't sign Radjolov just because of his reputation, right? And the same with Alex Semen and trading for Zach Cassian. And he does try to get those kinds of players once in a while.

And he has a shrewd negotiator. Like he's not like 100% crap GM. Right. Like, I think he's a great cap manager. Yeah, a good bond villain. Yeah, a very good bond villain. Looks like Jeff Goldblum, so he's got that handsome thing going for him. Great style.

But in terms of player evaluation, he's got these huge blind spots. And I think a lot of this started with when he first took over, he didn't believe that P.K. Suban was a top pair guy. And so they pushed hard on that bridge contract. And it just backfired so hard. And it almost seemed like they took it personally that he would win that Norris and then demand the money that they promised him when he signed the bridge contract. And they kind of did the same thing with Alex. scale changing. It's like they don't like to believe that the players that they have in their own system

are as high level talent as they actually are. Right. And that is, you know, that could be enough to be a death knell for this generation of the Canadians. Yeah. Well, okay, so I wanted to ask you because something that I was keying in on a lot last year with the Canadians was the job Michelle Tarian was doing and particularly with the breakouts out of their own zone. And, you know, a lot of it got kind of swept under the rug just because, you know, Gary Price was injured and people were just kind of were like, oh, well, we can't really judge the Canadians without him. You should just, it's kind of like a lost year sort of. But it was one of those things where their possession numbers actually did go up.

And they were, you know, definitely an above average team in that regard. Even though, like when I watched them, I saw so many inefficiencies with the way they were playing. And I remember early on in the year when they went on that winning streak and Elliot Friedman did this thing in his 30 thoughts where he highlighted how the Canadians were going against analytics by dumping the puck out of their own zone a lot, but just because they had all these kind of smaller, faster players, they were able to retrieve it a lot in the neutral zone more than your typical team and highlighted all.

Like, you know, cherry picked all these examples where I led the goals overlooking all the other times where they were sort of neutering P.K. Suban by, you know, instead of having him just do his magic and create stuff, getting him, getting the puck off. Yeah, it's just loving it out in the center ice. Which always struck me as a curious strategy, but, you know, for some reason, people really than weren't discussing it much, I feel like. Yeah, it's weird because, like, a lot of that possession impact, I think it came down simply to better players.

Like, if you look at what the Canadians were dealing with the year before, where they were a really bad possession team, their fourth-line center was Mani Malhotra, who had, like, a 35% coursey. Yeah. They had other fourth-liners who were terrible, and then they acquired Jeff Petrie at the deadline, and that possession impact didn't happen as strongly at the end of the last year,

but in the playoffs, it was there. So they brought in Tori Mitchell to be their fourth line center who, you know, he was playing third line in Buffalo, but he was great on the fourth line. Right. Paul Byron was huge on the fourth line, that speed, and he is great at driving possession. And Jeff Petrie on defense, trusting Nathan Bolliou a little bit more. Right. I think they just, and for some reason, whatever reason, Alexei Emelin had like a crazy good possession year last year. Like, I don't know if you noticed that, but it was just out of the blue.

He, I guess it was chemistry with Jeff Petrie, but even away from Petrie, he had a really good year. unfortunately for him he also happened to have like the worst PDO of his career so everyone thought he sucked last year but it was a lot of things that seemed more player related than systems related and that fast approach definitely worked with that team like people don't know but the canadians actually had like the second or third best forecheck in the entire NHL last year and it was like against teams like Anaheim los angeles san Jose they were the other top that you would think would be like your typical 4thian teams yeah the big teams that just punish people but the Canadians would just beat players to puck constantly with their speed. And same thing in the neutral zone is they had,

I believe they had the highest puck retrieval rate in the neutral zone of any team. So they were able to take advantage of those dumpouts, but it's one of those situations where, yeah, that was working, but it wasn't the best thing to do either way. Right. Because you can use your speed like that,

and it'll be fine, but if you use your speed to actually carry the puck instead, then you've got a team on their heels instead of a team that can just hang back and wait for the dumpout. And I think it is a little bit of an opportunity cost thing in the sense that you could retrieve the puck, but you've also put yourself in a kind of unnecessary puck battle,

or you probably had to exhaust a lot of your energy, and then all of a sudden you're probably going to just dump the puck in and change as opposed to actually do something with it. Especially in the neutral zone, like your puck retrieval rate, they were the tops in the league, but they were like 53%. Right. So like every time you dump out the puck, it's still 47% chance that it's coming right back in your zone.

So like I tried to highlight this a few times last year, how inefficient that is, but you know, the Canadians don't care. They'll continue to do that. that next year because they just have less talent on the blue line to move the puck now yeah and i'm sure that andre markov will be you know another step slower even though he seems to be working out hard this summer right well i mean as he's not getting any younger right i guess none of us are right yeah i'll get a bit older um jack when you're uh when you're keeping track of stuff for uh for the mcgill hockey team what sort of stuff are you prioritizing the most i mean at the highest level it's shot

different right so of course you like i i was having this discussion with i head coach this morning actually. Not plus minus? I mean, you know, if you say that it's plus minus but for a shot, it makes a lot more digestible. But essentially I told him, look, shot differentials today is goal differentials tomorrow. And if we're not playing for goal differentials, then what are we doing? Right. Like that's the ultimate goal, right?

Like, everything that you want to do on your team is to set yourself up for better goal differential tomorrow or next week or next year. like that's kind of the point of of coaching hockey right you want to make the most of what you have and you want to improve so so that's our number one tool and then we use some other things to to explain because I think shot differential does a very good job of telling us where we are but it doesn't tell us how we got there right and there are some players you know a couple I'm thinking about in particular who are very very strong possession players in terms of shot differentials but you would never know it by watching them and you're not really sure how they get there. So then we have some other,

let's say, how they play across Blue Line. So whether they drive entries or exits or prevent entries and exits against, it kind of gives us some clues about what to do. And beyond that, I mean, that's, I'd say 90% of what I do because I believe that analytics, especially in our case, is a subtractive activity, which means that we should use it to tell us what does matter and then spend less time on that. Because a coach's time is precious, a player's time is precious. My time less so because I organize the stuff. So, you know, like 100 minutes of my time, I like to say, it's worth as much as 10 minutes

of the coach's time and one minute of the player's time. So that's kind of how I like to work. You know, if I don't distill it down, then I'm not doing my job. And that's kind of, you know, Andrew, you actually making, let's say, my job more difficulty if we were to buy sport logic I would have a lot more to sort through. Right and that's actually

one of the things that I'm concerned about is I don't want to add something if it doesn't if it doesn't help us get more value. Well that's I mean we're still in that infancy stage where we were discussing this before descriptive versus predictive and it is really cool

sort of knowing how we get there but it's also important not to lose sight of like what the ultimate goal is. is right so it's like you when you have all this new stuff there's going to be a lot of uh sort of pitfalls where people are like putting a lot of importance on stuff that might ultimately wind up not being that important which isn't to say that you know we shouldn't be excited about these times but i think that like five years from now we're going to look back at this phase and be like oh stuff we thought was important wasn't actually and stuff we may not have necessarily thought of was

all of a sudden like a really important thing well i think we'll probably be moving away a little bit from like an individual's coursey as well. Right. We'll be able to better isolate what is that player's talent, whether or not they relied on teammates to produce that number or not, or opponents, right? So there are a lot of players, especially in like 48 to 52% range,

because nobody likes to admit it among the analytics community, but there is a very substantial error rate in those numbers because it's all tracked by old guys in the rafters, pressing buttons on an analog system, who's on the ice and who's not and is really poorly done. Especially like if you go back and look at the coursey numbers for the outdoor game between the Bruins and the Canadians last year, they had P.K. Suen playing like 38 minutes of that game.

And it was like the difference was on those jerseys, they couldn't tell the difference between Pekke and Petrie. Right. Right? So P.K. had like this huge amount of ice time, and Petrie played like seven minutes. And it's like, well, that's not right. And they might have gone back and changed it now,

but there's stuff like that all the time where players with similar numbers will get attributed different stuff and you can see specifically like Patrice Bergeron is not going to be playing a bunch of ice time with the fourth line for example but over time those error rates will be smaller but in that 52 to 48% range

I'm always skeptical about how good that player is or like plus or minus 2% relatively probably a little bit less relatively but if you can find something that they're good at like say say if Chris Russell was a little bit better, he happens to be very good at controlled exits, right?

But let's pretend that he's not an abysmal possession. And he's just mid-range kind of crappy. If he has great exit numbers, great passing numbers, most likely he's not the person driving that poor result. So you can look at and see what was happening with his teammates, was he paired with the wrong guy and that's what's driving it, or is it a little bit of random variation? And you can explain away some of the error rate that way, whereas before it was just this is this.

Yeah. Maybe if Chris Ralsall was a bit better, he'd have a contract by now. Indeed. That's true. I'm sure he was just a bit better. Yeah. I mean, with what he's asking, maybe he should just lower that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Guys, thanks for taking the time to come on the PDO cast. This is pretty fun. Thanks for having me. People can follow Andrew at Andrew Bergshire on Twitter and Jack, your ML underscore Hahn, right? Yep. H-A-N. And read all your writing at the sites I listed before, and we'll be back soon.

So thanks again, guys. Thank you. No problem. The Hockey PDOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Filippovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.