I am a huge hockey fan, as you may have established, but I am also a big fan of baseball, which really couldn’t be more of a different sport. There is a lot to like about hockey, as you are certainly aware, from the physicality, to the beauty of a tic-tac-toe set up to a goal. With baseball, there are fixed end points from at bat to at bat, from inning to inning, and it makes statistics pervasive, and analytics very telling. Cause and effect is easy to establish. I really enjoy that part of baseball. I am a scientist, after all.
The analysis of hockey is so much more difficult to comprehend in real time. So much of it has to go by look and feel, rather than by tangible results. In the game, it can look like Sidney Crosby is finding open ice, setting up his teammates and playing responsible defense, but it’s tough to know for sure until the game is over. It’s also difficult to separate the cause and effect of skaters from the effect a hot or cold goalie might have on a game. Statistical analysis, essentially, is not as obvious in hockey as it is in baseball in particular, but also football and basketball.
The Capitals have found the guy who can unlock the mystery of statistical analysis in hockey. Tim Ohashi, a local kid who worked his way from video internship to a position in Barry Trotz’s coaching staff is the well respected stat-head the Capitals lean on. His full background is illustrated in Dan Steinberg’s article in the Washington Post.
As I might have guessed, Ohashi spends much of his time analyzing video and preparing scouting reports, while also working his way through the numbers. While it is apparent that hockey’s stats movement is a bit more art than science at this point, it appears that Ohashi is an artist. He has the respect of his locker room, and the admiration of his fellow coaches.
It’s hard to look at the Capitals and think that they are wrong. Washington is once again in playoff position, a year after scoring more points than any other team in the lead. How much credit can be assigned to Ohashi? I guess that’s a little difficult to quantify.
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