ESPN: Senators are “Skeptics” When it Comes to Analytics

Hand out the soma because we’re entering a brave new world when it comes to hockey analytics. As the NHL rolled out its new enhanced statistics pages — like, “Hey, we invented zone starts” new — ESPN pooled its resources and rated every professional sports team across the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL on strength of their belief in sports analytics.

Rather than explain it myself, here are the words from ESPN:

ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com unleashed our experts and an army of researchers to rate 122 teams on the strength of each franchise’s analytics staff, its buy-in from execs and coaches, its investment in biometric data and how much its approach is predicated on analytics. After looking at the stats, reaching out to every team and dozens of informed sources and evaluating each front office, we ranked an overall top 10 and bottom 10 and placed each team in one of five tiers by sport.

So where did the Senators rank?

The Senators finished in the second-lowest tier that the NHL had to offer. The only team that finished lower was the “Nonbelievers”-tiered Colorado Avalanche.

With the New York Rangers and the Anaheim Ducks, the Senators were lumped into the “Skeptics” category.

Here is Craig Custance’s summary of the Senators’ situation:

The Senators lost an analytics proponent when Tim Murray was lured away to run the Sabres. As with many things for the Senators, Ottawa’s lack of investment in analytics may stem from a tight budget.

However, there’s an argument to be made that a tight budget is even more of a reason to invest in analytics to find an edge, as we’ve seen in other sports such as MLB where the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland A’s use progressive strategies to beat teams with substantially larger payrolls.

Flames GM Brad Treliving, formerly the Coyotes assistant GM, said that this line of thinking was the case when he was in Arizona, and it was owned by the league. “We had to find percentage increases, and we had to do little things better,” he said. “We couldn’t afford big mistakes.”

Analytics help prevent exactly that, a tactic the Sens could employ as they build a team up around some interesting young players.

Senators assistant general manager Randy Lee discussed the organization’s opinion of analytics during an interview on TSN 1200 this past August.

“We’ve talked about it the other day with Bryan (Murray). We do have people on staff that have background on this and they’ve presented ideas to us. I think we try to get a mesh of what the management team think and the coaching staff think of where it fits. It’s not just a matter of forcing it down the pipe. We want to make sure that it’s something that can really complement what we’re doing. We do a lot of analytics-type stuff in different ways and we’ve been doing it for years. It’s not brand new, but it’s sort of taking on a new optic where teams are doing this and designating a certain person. I don’t think Bryan (Murray) believes in designating a certain person to this, but I think as an organization, we believe that if there are components of it that we think will help us and complement the job we do, we’ll try and incorporate it into our day-to-day work.”

If the Senators are truly doing analytics-type stuff, it’s obvious that whomever they’re employing to do it is doing or a poor job of it or they simply don’t have a respected voice within the consultation process. Provided it’s still true that Bryan Murray does not want a designated person to explicitly crunch numbers, it is frustrating. Sure, Murray’s “old school”, but the precarious nature of this decision means that the Senators risk falling further behind progressive organizations.

Unfortunately, Custance’s assessment is right. As a smaller budget organization, the Senators should be exploring analytics and trying to identify and exploit each and every market inefficiency that they can find.

Obviously there’s something to be said about bringing in a know-it-all who would shove stuff metrics down management’s collective throats. That being said, if someone has a great understanding of the game and can help with this analysis, there’s no reason why the Senators shouldn’t bring in someone who can add to the discussion and support the decision-making process by bringing new ideas to the table.

Analytics are not the “be all and end all” when it comes to evaluating a player or team, but they are a very useful tool when applied correctly.

From Ottawa’s player usage to willfully ignoring easily identifiable red flags on prospective trades or contract extensions/free agent signings, the Senators have made a number of self-inflicted mistakes at the management level. Much of what they have done is counter-intuitive to how a small market franchise should operate. And even though it’s at a micro-level, the organization’s interest in keeping Chris Neil around at the expense of Erik Condra says enough. They could use the help.