Penguins hire analytics expert from Carnegie Mellon - Slappybrown related

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Kicksave
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Penguins hire analytics expert from Carnegie Mellon - Slappybrown related

Post by Kicksave »

http://triblive.com/sports/penguins/878 ... a-penguins
Hiring Sam Ventura as a consultant responsible for analytics only is the start, Penguins vice president of hockey operations Jason Karmanos insisted.

With hockey becoming more data-driven, building an analytics team is one of the Penguins' priorities, one over which Karmanos will have significant influence.

And one that started with the hiring of Ventura, a 27-year-old Swissvale native who, with Andrew Thomas, cofounded hockey analytics website war-on-ice.com.
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columbia
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Post by columbia »

This is how you hire a stats analyst.
MalkinIsMyHomeboy
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Post by MalkinIsMyHomeboy »

this is akin the United States legalizing gay marriage aka "why the hell did it take so long"
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Post by FLPensFan »

My big take-away here is that war-on-ice.com will not be going offline, which is a huge relief. These guys just had an article about a week ago about how they came in and took on the challenge of becoming the replacement for ExtraSkater.com, after Tyler Dellow was hired into the NHL by Edmonton (and subsequently shut down ExtraSkater). This has happened to a few of the good sites.....the guys get hired by NHL teams and shut down their sites, leaving a large void for the analytics community.
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Post by slappybrown »

ExtraSkater was run by Daryl Metcalf who got hired by TML.

Dellow took his blog down when he left, which was a real shame.

What's particularly great about this is that Ventura ruined Yohe earlier this year when Yohe made some trash post re Kane that made no sense. Yohe spent last night trying to spin it into "we could have been sued" because the article vaguely mentioned that Kane was alleged to have "character issues" rather than the fact that the article was plainly somewhere on the continuum of entirely made up to negligently slapped together like a high school sophomore with a term paper due in 4 hours. There are hundreds of articles about Kane's "character issues" on the internet, and his justification is hilarious. He ended his twitter rant with "don't be so smug" so get ready for a raft of passive-aggressive articles every time something goes wrong along the lines of "they hired a PhD but they can't even score a goal!"
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Post by shmenguin »

the fate of sutter becomes even more interesting. an analytics darling, he is not.
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Post by meow »

I'm interested to know much how analytics play a role in decisions. Sure, all the teams say how nice it is to have an advanced stat guy, but do GMs really turn down deals because a guy has a poopoo Corsi? I would guess if analytics back up a GMs gut feeling, he likes the advanced stats and if they go against him, he throws them under the bus.
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Post by count2infinity »

Just another tool added to the utility belt.
Gaucho
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Post by Gaucho »

shmenguin wrote:the fate of sutter becomes even more interesting. an analytics darling, he is not.
My first thought as well.
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Post by slappybrown »

meow wrote:I'm interested to know much how analytics play a role in decisions. Sure, all the teams say how nice it is to have an advanced stat guy, but do GMs really turn down deals because a guy has a poopoo Corsi? I would guess if analytics back up a GMs gut feeling, he likes the advanced stats and if they go against him, he throws them under the bus.
The levels of analysis these guys are doing is way beyond "what is the CF% for player x"

But, I suspect that there's no good answer. Take baseball -- there were guys at the forefront who loved it, and other places that steadfastedly refused to utilize it. It will just depend on that team's GM/staff to determine how important it is. There are teams that are heavily reliant on it, and others that think its largely useless (TML up till last year, the Avs now). Rutherford seems relatively willing to use this stuff, especially given his age and tenure in the NHL. You'd reflexively expect him to downplay this stuff, but to his credit, he's shown a willingness to use it.
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Post by MalkinIsMyHomeboy »

I don't think its just for GM-ing. Analytics could also be very helpful in terms of scouting opponents
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Post by shafnutz05 »

I could be wrong but I think @Juice is a pretty big data analytics guy.
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Post by meow »

My comment should be taken a bit more general than I presented it.
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Post by FistOfCaufield »

meow wrote:I'm interested to know much how analytics play a role in decisions. Sure, all the teams say how nice it is to have an advanced stat guy, but do GMs really turn down deals because a guy has a poopoo Corsi? I would guess if analytics back up a GMs gut feeling, he likes the advanced stats and if they go against him, he throws them under the bus.
hmmm I know this movie... I've seen it... it had brad pitt and that little fat kid in it.
tfrizz
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Post by tfrizz »

slappybrown wrote:
meow wrote:I'm interested to know much how analytics play a role in decisions. Sure, all the teams say how nice it is to have an advanced stat guy, but do GMs really turn down deals because a guy has a poopoo Corsi? I would guess if analytics back up a GMs gut feeling, he likes the advanced stats and if they go against him, he throws them under the bus.
The levels of analysis these guys are doing is way beyond "what is the CF% for player x"

But, I suspect that there's no good answer. Take baseball -- there were guys at the forefront who loved it, and other places that steadfastedly refused to utilize it. It will just depend on that team's GM/staff to determine how important it is. There are teams that are heavily reliant on it, and others that think its largely useless (TML up till last year, the Avs now). Rutherford seems relatively willing to use this stuff, especially given his age and tenure in the NHL. You'd reflexively expect him to downplay this stuff, but to his credit, he's shown a willingness to use it.
I don't see how anybody would be surprised by that. Most teams have their own advanced stats that nobody else knows of. The stuff provided to us, such as Corsi, only scratch the surface of advanced stats.
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Post by slappybrown »

tfrizz wrote:
slappybrown wrote:
meow wrote:I'm interested to know much how analytics play a role in decisions. Sure, all the teams say how nice it is to have an advanced stat guy, but do GMs really turn down deals because a guy has a poopoo Corsi? I would guess if analytics back up a GMs gut feeling, he likes the advanced stats and if they go against him, he throws them under the bus.
The levels of analysis these guys are doing is way beyond "what is the CF% for player x"

But, I suspect that there's no good answer. Take baseball -- there were guys at the forefront who loved it, and other places that steadfastedly refused to utilize it. It will just depend on that team's GM/staff to determine how important it is. There are teams that are heavily reliant on it, and others that think its largely useless (TML up till last year, the Avs now). Rutherford seems relatively willing to use this stuff, especially given his age and tenure in the NHL. You'd reflexively expect him to downplay this stuff, but to his credit, he's shown a willingness to use it.
I don't see how anybody would be surprised by that. Most teams have their own advanced stats that nobody else knows of. The stuff provided to us, such as Corsi, only scratch the surface of advanced stats.
People are unaware of that based on discussions re these issues at LGP/here.
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Post by meecrofilm »

FistOfCaufield wrote:
meow wrote:I'm interested to know much how analytics play a role in decisions. Sure, all the teams say how nice it is to have an advanced stat guy, but do GMs really turn down deals because a guy has a poopoo Corsi? I would guess if analytics back up a GMs gut feeling, he likes the advanced stats and if they go against him, he throws them under the bus.
hmmm I know this movie... I've seen it... it had brad pitt and that little fat kid in it.
Mr & Mrs. Smith?
Craig
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Post by Craig »

No meet joe black.
meecrofilm
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Post by meecrofilm »

Ahhh. Always get those confused.
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