The Wild announced yesterday that they have hired Andrew Thomas and Alexandra Mandrycky, who will be responsible for data collection and interpretation. Thomas and Mandrycky co-founded war-on-ice.com, a website that combines regular traditional game stats with advanced metrics to analyze teams and players.
This can only be seen as a step in the right direction for the Wild. Advanced analytics are all the rage these days in all sports. They can be of great value when the data is analyzed and trends are discovered to enhance how effective players play within a system.
Advanced analytics is not exactly a new idea, it was popularized in the 2003 by Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland Athletics. The Michael Lewis book about Beane's system spurred the 2011 movie "Moneyball", starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. The Academy Award winning film brought national attention to the technique.
Advanced analytics are not the end all of sports though. They are not flawless and the game is still played by human beings with differing degrees of skill and heart. There are no stats to measure the heart of a man, nor his effort level. Statistics can only assist a coach in implementing his system and to work with the personnel that has been assembled by management.
The use of advanced statistics does have it's drawbacks. The most notable are that they are finite, while creativity is infinite. The trick is how to balance these advanced statistics with the tremendous skill levels of the top athletes. That will be the fine line that will be ever toed by coaches and players alike.
Players are often asked to play within a system and those that buy in are rewarded with playing time. Those that balk or do not toe the line, tend to find themselves in the coach's doghouse. Coaches must be very careful in how they utilize the data that they are now privy to and to what degree they use it as part of their overall strategy.
Devan Dubnyk has attributed his career turnaround to techniques he discovered while working with former NHL goalie Steve Valiquette. Valiquette is a guru when it comes to advanced analytics for goaltenders. His Royal Road system uses colors to define shooting areas, green, red, and yellow. The shooting areas are all based off the "royal road" which is the imaginary lines between the circles in the offensive zone, stretching from the goal line out to the blue line.
The takeaway is that the Wild brass are stepping up their game. They are not the first to adopt the advanced statistics methodology, but they are certainly ahead of the curve in this trend. The Blackhawks are the leader in this area as far as the NHL is concerned. If the Wild expect to compete this is a great place to start.
The trade deadline is fast approaching, and the timing is right for this type of addition to the team. The All-Star break is upon us, but when the schedule resumes on Tuesday, the pace of the games will increase. Points earned going forward will be much harder to come by and those squandered will surely be detrimental to playoff hopes.
February is make or break for a lot of teams, some searching for the player or players to push them over the hump and others looking to sell their assets. The Wild find themselves for the first time all year on the outside looking in at the playoff standings. They have been very ordinary over the last month and half, leaving points on the table on too many nights. They have become very predictable and far too soft.
The Wild have fourteen games remaining before the February 29th deadline, and just six of those are at home. The time off could be a welcome break for the team to reenergize and get the fight back in their game. The next couple of weeks will go a long way in determining the moves that Chuck Fletcher will be making. One thing you can count on, this roster will not look the same on February 29th.