The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Meghan Chayka Gives Her Bold Predictions

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there, it's Jeff Merrick here. You know, my wife and I both have countless memories from spending time discovering Canada. Well, I always come back to the summer of 2005. We were staying at a cottage on Lake Joseph here in Muscoca, watching the Live 8 music festival in Barry on television. My buddy Jeremy Taggart, former drummer from Our Lady Peace, dropped by after his band's set and stayed the rest of the weekend at the cottage after the band's set and told some incredible backstage stories about some amazing Canadian music icons. I will never forget that.

Starting point is 00:00:35 And fast forward to today, I'm a hockey parent, and I feel like I'm always on the road with my family, whether that means traveling across southern Ontario hockey ranks during the week or overnight at tournaments on select weekends. But what makes our hockey experience even more special is booking a place on Airbnb when we're on the road for overnight tournaments. All of this traveling got me to thinking, my home's just sitting empty when I could be hosting it on Airbnb instead. I'd simply put up my house on Airbnb, pre-select dates that I want to host, bam, it's practical, easy to manage, and it enables people like me to make some money while they're not at home. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host.

Starting point is 00:01:28 Someone were more than delighted to have on the program today. She's the co-founder of Stathletes, which I first heard about, like, it's like 15 years ago, Megan Shiker, where an OHL coach was rattling off all these numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. I'm like, you don't have a staff to come up with all this. And he's like, okay, keep it on the DL, but there's a group we work with called Stathletes. And I got like the full rundown of your whole organization. You can watch her with Fanduel on TSN. You see her on ESPN as well.

Starting point is 00:01:59 She's Megan Chica, and she joins me now. First of all, has anything sort of, like when we look at preseason hockey, I don't know if you can take any of that and say, because of this, we expect that in the regular season. Like doing what you do at Stathletes, can you draw anything out of the preseason? Can you draw anything out of exhibition games? I mean, it totally depends. I guess you can see how people come out of the gate.

Starting point is 00:02:26 But I would absolutely say that it's more about player development, creating that competitive environment where you can actually promote or relegate the people you want to. So it's a totally different process in the preseason. And with that in context, I wouldn't say, don't tease too much. You know, if your team's not doing well, that's pretty meaningless. If they're doing really well, don't get too excited. It's way too early. There's 82 games left.

Starting point is 00:02:50 It's a long, long road. So Vancouver destroys Calgary the other night. so we all expect, like, you know, Quinn Hughes is going to have 120 points. And Elias Pedersen is going to be about $1005. He might. He might. But you might want to take that from a preseason game.

Starting point is 00:03:05 Yeah, a grain of salt with all of it. You know, one of the things, like, so many years ago, this would have been like in the classic power forward era. So like in your Cam Neely, Rick Tockeet, a little bit later on, John Leclair, like that type of era, the power forwards always popped in year four. the first three years where they kind of feel it out

Starting point is 00:03:26 and then you have a look and in year four it pops. I don't know if there's a rule, a formula. I know everyone's different. But like how do you know when someone's ready to take that next step

Starting point is 00:03:38 here in 2025, much like we looked at, you know, Cam Neely, you know, year four, he's going to hit it big with the Boston Bruins.

Starting point is 00:03:46 When you're looking at analytically, I think you look at the underlying data that actually drives scoring. So if you're looking at shot quality, creation where they're passing to, there's different metrics that, you know, I've been partly stole from soccer and around other sports like expected threat. Do you move the puck into like

Starting point is 00:04:02 high valued areas, how so? And like, where are you in that creation? So when you look at a power forward, I know it's really boring, but I do have Leandro Seidel leading again this season with, you know, 47 projected goals this season. And there's reasons, right? Power forwards are able to get into those dirty areas. They can take contact, which we know the NHL is very rough now. And so someone like Leon Dreisel has those great underlying metrics, high expected

Starting point is 00:04:31 goals, he's able to like get his shot off. A great shot. Very deceptive. And hey, if you're playing with Connor McDavid, who do you cover? You know, I think I'm going McDavid worst. So I'm glad you took us to Dreiselel right away. I don't think I've

Starting point is 00:04:47 ever asked anyone in your position this question before. But like, how do you when you're coming up when you when you when you when you when you when you when you when you when you when you talk about expected goals for example sure i see i see leon dry sidel in his office on the power play along the goal line there's like three players in the league that can score from there so i look at that area and i say to myself expected goals really low right there except if you're leon dry siddle like that shot from right along the goal line that he finds all the time like i'm curious to sort of of like, it depends on the players, certainly. But how do you determine what is an expected goal? How much of it? How much of it is based on that specific player in that specific area? Some guys are great in front of the net.

Starting point is 00:05:39 Some guys are great one time around the on the half wall. Some guys like Leon Dryhill or score from the red line. I don't have an answer. I hope you do. I do. But that's a very nerdy question. I don't know how much time you have. or if your audience will like that.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Go for it. I will preface it with my team presented at Harvard this weekend at Nessus. So we got to be really geeky. I think that's the challenge with this type of work is there's no one answer. Whether it's baseball analytics, soccer analytics, the beauty is in the beholder of whoever creates the model. And you can have data from so many different sources. So you're worried about accuracy, granularity, how it's tracked,

Starting point is 00:06:17 what type of model you want to make from it. There's so many different applications of how you can build, even what is a basic excepted goal model. So a lot of the big drivers are location to the net. So a closer you get to the net, it's intuitive, right? You're able to do that. Unfortunately, the answer is now there's like millions of data points a game. So there's so many different ways to make expected goal models.

Starting point is 00:06:41 Some can include shooter-specific models so you know who the shooter is. So if Austin Matthews is in his like heyday shooting and, you know, he almost broke 70, he would have a higher expected goal than Cody C.C. taking a shot. That's just the reality, right? So there's, there's different ways to bake the cake and there's no wrong way. There's only wrong ways to interpret it if you are a data scientist. So that's that's part of this too, right? There's the information that is how you interpret it and what you do with it. Numbers don't budge, but our interpretations of them do. Here's one thing that I've always wondered about. If you want to get like, if you want to get really geeky here. It's a Friday afternoon. Here we go, Meg. Why not? We've always, okay, I'm always curious about who the best passer is.

Starting point is 00:07:26 And we've always used assists as the proxy. Whoever has the most assist, well, they must be the best passer. They must be the biggest playmaker. I've always disagreed with that. But always the only thing we've ever had as a proxy or as a way to demonstrate whether this person's a good passer slash playmaker is assists. I've always been uncomfortable with that. should I be uncomfortable?

Starting point is 00:07:50 Correct. And actually I had a couple MLB executives say they really like the metric that we created, which was shot assist. I'm not sure if it's been, you know, somewhere else for the last 15 years as well. But certainly who creates passes that lead to a shot right after. That's a shot assist. The other one you can do too is base the shot unexpected goals. So we have a cutoff for scoring chances. It depends on the person. But typically it's a higher quality shot is a scoring chance. chance. And so whoever creates a pass that ends up in a scoring chance, you get a scoring chance assist. So you're bucketing things. Yes, there's going to be some bleed where it's like a little bit more too binary for some people that are very geeky. But for the average person that just wants to know, right, who passes to what ends up in a shot. So you're getting your teammate in a good position. And those are hard passes to make. And I'll give you a couple really great examples. I'll actually give you three. One, Mitch Marner, great playmaker. For whatever, reason he not only, and I mean, that's a nice thing with tracking data is we actually can see all the passing seams. So where's the player looking? Where can he pass? And then where does he

Starting point is 00:08:56 decide to pass? Because some passes are hard to make. And the players that don't have a skill to make them, they either don't make them or their pass gets intercepted. The players that make those difficult passes typically set up their team for higher quality chances because that teammate is in like a highly coveted area, right? One that has a lot of coverage. People are looking. Like no one wants to opposing team a shot from the inner slot. That's not on that. The coach isn't like, let's get more shots than the inner slots than no coach, you know? So if they're getting it, it's because they're able to see the ice differently and react really quickly. So a Mitch Marner, a jack-eye goal, who will be playing together, those are like ultimate, you know, playmaking geniuses, see those

Starting point is 00:09:38 slots, have the ability and skill set and will hit those open seams. Now you look at another player like Matthew Kachuk, part of his secret sauce is he can actually make passes from behind the net. So he likes to set up his teammates, same with Mitch Marner. He'll make those unique passes from behind the net. He has the wherewithal to see his teammates there. He also knows that they're going to that area. And he just has that timing thing down where he can teleport that puck there. He takes the punishment. He's not scared, especially the Kachukes are not scared of getting hit. They actually like it, right? So those passes with contact. There's a lot of playmaking models.

Starting point is 00:10:16 I actually am way more into passing than I am into shooting because I think that a lot of that hasn't been looked at in the NHL, but certainly drives a lot of high quality shots from that pass. So, yes, you should be very worried about just looking at assist and assuming that's a great player. Yeah, I've kind of parked that. And I thought, like, much like you, like, okay, so the minute we get like sophisticated puck tracking technology,

Starting point is 00:10:35 now we're going to find out who's actually a good passer and who's a good playmaker and who's not. So here's, let me do one more geeky question for it. And then I want to pivot to goaltenders, quick. Okay, so I was having a conversation with someone from an NHL team a couple of weeks ago. So I walked in my dog and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just cold, he turns to me and says, you know what? You know what a big problem in the NHL is?

Starting point is 00:10:58 I said, what's that? He said, too many defensemen shoot the puck. And I said, what? And he said, no, too many defensemen shoot the puck. And I said, well, they're not shooting to score. They're shooting to make rebounds. And he said, if I was running a team, there's no way I would let my defensemen shoot the puck. It is the lowest percentage.

Starting point is 00:11:16 It's not going to happen. How many teams are scoring rebound goals? And I'd say, like, well, it's in the playoffs. We had a lot of rebound goals. And he's like, poppycock. I would not let my defenseman shoot the puck. I would not. Just distribute.

Starting point is 00:11:29 To which Megan Cheka says what? Well, a counter example is a Carolina hurricanes. But, I mean, you can't just say, hey, defensemen, shoot the puck. And no one else knows what's going on. It has to be well coached in the system. So Carolina has the most shot times per game. 74 they're actually they might actually be the most shots by defensemen by a percentage and or in the top three but the reason is is because they're going for puck deflections rebounds

Starting point is 00:11:55 tip-ins they're crashing the net as soon as they see an open seam with a defenseman with a puck and they also have shooters that have heavy shots that are defensemen so they're not just defensive defensemen that they're like hey just shoot no they know they have a great shot as well from the point so it has to work as one and have a game plan and be actually executed to get that higher expected goal in and around the net, but certainly you can't say that over 82 games, they're not one of those teams that year over year gets great quality shots and scores and when game. So I would disagree with him that that's a blanket statement. I would say there's nuances of building a roster, but that would be my geeky answer. Eric Tulski clearly

Starting point is 00:12:34 knows something too. Yeah, he's kind of a smart. Maybe. Maybe. You know what I've, yeah, I've always said this about Eric Tulski. This is, and I don't know whether this is impressive or ridiculous. But when you look at all the things that Eric Tulski, GM of the Carolina Hurricanes, could be doing with his life, considering it's patents he holds, education he's had, a career past, he could have taken. He's chosen the one that he's chosen the one with the least amount of compensation. Like of all the things that he's done, like all the things that he could have chosen, I'm always impressed.

Starting point is 00:13:11 He's taken the one that just seems like, you know what, I'm good at this. And this is a lot of fun. And I don't care what the money is going to be like. I think there's a lot of change in sport, too, in terms of, you know, public good, general. I mean, sport is one of the most amazing vibes, I think, of any pocket of industry. So in Eric Telsky's defense, he's now the GM, which top end people in hockey do get compensated well. And there's also a lot of good and joy that you can get out of your job. So why not both?

Starting point is 00:13:41 Okay. So here becomes one of the questions. Who are the smartest teams in the NHL, you think? That's a question that I am absolutely not answering, but I would say that it's possible to tease that out by finding year over year who ends up higher on that, if that's their goal, right? So they're smart for different reasons.

Starting point is 00:14:01 There's entertaining hockey. There's winning hockey. There's having big stars, different franchises, kind of hang their hat different ways. And I mean, everyone wants to win the Stanley Cup. Let's not be mistaken with. that. But there's constraints of money, resources, even location into what you can do. So I think smart is whoever optimizes for all of those conditions.

Starting point is 00:14:24 It's like saying, who should win the GM of the year? And one of the points that I've always made is, well, whoever wins a Stanley Cup. That's the GM of the year for a job to win the Stanley Cup. Give it a those, you know, crying out of dollars. Okay, last question. How do you measure goaltenders? And who should we be paying attention to? And is the obvious answer, Connor Hallibuck of the Winnipeg Jets? Well, there's so many ways to measure goal. goaltenders, and that's a nice thing about having a lot of data is, you know, where the shots are, where they are in that, what type of shot, what are they stopping? Connor Hullabuck's a really interesting case because he was well worked last year.

Starting point is 00:14:54 He actually had the second most shots based in the NHL. And he had plus 20 and what a metric goal saved above expected, which basically says, like, if you're zero, you're an average goaltender in the NHL. If it's positive, it means you're saving more goals than a normal goaltender would. If it's negative, you really have to worry. Connor Hullabuck was plus 20. He saved what would be 20 goals for the Winnipeg Jets didn't go in the back of the net

Starting point is 00:15:19 that would have gone in for an average goaltender. So certainly he won a lot of awards. It was for a reason. But he was also very worked. So I would be a little concerned if he sees that many shots that he's going to do the same damage this season. Okay, one final one for you.

Starting point is 00:15:33 And I can't make because I'm such a geek. What's put the Plymouth Whalers jersey on the wall? Oh my gosh. That's funny. You know what? Some Americans. they don't get the right jersey. They think that's a Dallas Star's jersey.

Starting point is 00:15:46 I love that you're a geek job. That's why I came on. I haven't had a podcast in years and I saw your name and I was like, you know what? We're not, we're going to go completely off script and just talk. Yeah, it's totally true. My brother was drafted to the Plymouth Whalers. That's his jersey. Oh, is that his?

Starting point is 00:16:01 I know he played, but did he play any games with the Whalers? No, he wanted to go college. So he went to some training camps and, yeah. Gotcha. I love it. Yeah. I missed the Clement Whalers. Anyhow.

Starting point is 00:16:14 Great Jersey. It's just great colors, right? Like seriously. Pete DeBore's old team. Listen, continued success, best of luck. Thanks for hopping on. Really appreciate it. We'll be knocking at your door sooner than later.

Starting point is 00:16:26 Thanks so much for doing this. Absolutely. Thanks, Jeff. I said 16 hours last night, every day this week, every day this month. I can't get out my head. style ambitions day to day because you can call it all right I went to the dark man

Starting point is 00:16:48 and tried to give me a little medicine I'm like now and that's fine I'm not against those methods but new it's me and myself and how this is going to be fixed in my mind I didn't want to back I turned down the picture

Starting point is 00:17:07 I didn't want to bang it I'm going to be in the dead It's a death It's Jeff Merrick here You know my wife and I both have countless memories From spending time discovering Canada Well, I always come back to the summer of 2005 We were staying at a cottage on Lake Joseph here in Muscoca

Starting point is 00:17:45 watching the Live 8 music festival in Barry on television. My buddy Jeremy Taggart, former drummer from Our Lady Peace, dropped by after his band's set and stayed the rest of the weekend at the cottage after the band set and told some incredible backstage stories about some amazing Canadian music icons. I will never forget that. And fast forward to today, I'm a hockey parent.

Starting point is 00:18:09 And I feel like I'm always on the road with my family, whether that means traveling across southern Ontario hockey ranks during the week or overnight at tournaments on select weekends. But what makes our hockey experience even more special is booking a place on Airbnb when we're on the road for overnight tournaments. All of this traveling got me to thinking, my home's just sitting empty when I could be hosting it on Airbnb instead. I'd simply put up my house on Airbnb, pre-select dates that I want to host. Bam. It's practical, easy to manage, and it enables people like me to make some money while they're not at home. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host.

The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Meghan Chayka Gives Her Bold Predictions

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