How the Canucks' analytics department stacks up against Stanley Cup contenders

Yahoo

6 days ago

You know the old adage: There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
It's a line that gets deployed often during discussions on the use of data in sports — and especially in hockey.
Data in sports is now everywhere. Where once it was used in the simplest terms — timing runners on a track, keeping tabs on who has the most goals or home runs — now numbers are used to quantify everything: how many shots has this player been on the ice for and against, aka 'Corsi', being the most notable.
But to use data effectively, to avoid being defeated by the base analysis of its utility at the top of this column, you must understand the nuances of its application.
And in hockey, there is a lot of nuance. An analyst I know once said to me that the hardest thing about using data in hockey is that 75 per cent of the game is simply luck.
The whole job, then, is to try to control the 25 per cent of the game you can.
Data analysis has fine-tuned the game over the past 15 years, more than anything. Analytics have helped highlight wasteful trends in the game, and helped explain why mid-tier players are effective in their play and redefined how defencemen should play — less brawn, more positioning.
And so let us turn to the four remaining teams in the hunt for the Stanley Cup this spring and take a look at how they use data and how they may present lessons for the Vancouver Canucks, who would like to be Stanley Cup aspirants again one day soon:
To quote one league source, who affirmed that of the four remaining teams in the playoffs, the Hurricanes are quite clearly the most data-forward: 'Tulsky is Tulsky.'
That would be Eric Tulsky, the Hurricanes' GM who has long been closely aligned with team owner Tom Dundon, who is a true iconoclast when it comes to running his businesses. Tulsky, who was director of analytics before a promotion to assistant general manager in 2020 and then to full GM last summer, has a PhD in chemistry and holds 27 U.S. patents related to his work with nanoparticles.
He rose to prominence by writing about hockey data in his spare time. He was among the first to highlight the effectiveness of entering the zone with control of the puck, eschewing the dump-and-chase game.
He has also long been aligned with head coach Rod Brind'Amour, whose Hurricanes squads dominate possession and also shots. Tulsky has clearly come to understand how to apply statistical ideas to the game and explain them in effective terms to hockey lifers such as Brind'Amour.
If there's a team in the NHL that people think of when one says 'analytics', it's Carolina. The Hurricanes win a lot. But they have yet to make the Stanley Cup final in their current era. Indeed, the last time they made the final was 2006, when they won the championship and when Jim Rutherford was their GM.
Florida is, by consensus of the handful of NHL people I spoke with, the second-most analytically inclined. Assistant general manager Sunny Mehta is a former derivatives trader who became a professional poker player and then a well-regarded hockey blogger. He has been working in the NHL in various capacities since 2014 and has also consulted for Major League Baseball teams.
He was hired by the Panthers in 2020 as vice-president of hockey strategy, then was given an assistant general manager's title in 2023.
General manager Bill Zito clearly values his input.
'They don't get offended if they come up with a statistics-based concept and somebody's like 'Come on?' They don't get defensive. They explain it,' Zito told the Miami Herald recently.
The Stars have only had a true in-house analytics group since 2022, when they hired a former assistant of Kyle Dubas in Matt Rodell to lead their new department.
The Stars were already a smartly run organization under GM Jim Nill, consistently delivering strong teams that seemed to qualify for the playoffs year after year. They made the Stanley Cup final in the bubble in 2020. They kept churning out young players to buttress up a roster long led by top-end veteran players like Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin. They had done well finding star defencemen like Miro Heiskanen.
But surely the addition of a data-driven group has helped them solidify their standing as one of the NHL's model organizations.
'Everyone spends the same money, and what can separate us from other teams?' Nill told the Dallas Morning News in 2022. 'That's what we're trying to find. We're trying to be the best. Can we find something that separates us?'
For a long time, the Oilers seemed openly defiant of the wisdom data provided. And then they got the game's best player in the fold and maybe it didn't matter. But it always seemed odd they would turn away from a tool that could add to their lineup.
And in recent years, they have clearly become more interested in the data and have built a much more complete lineup around Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
The Oilers hired a literal oilman in Michael Parkatti in 2023 to lead up their analytics team:. He had previously worked for Suncor energy.
The Canucks have had an analytics department of one kind or another for nearly 15 years now. They have been interested in numbers no matter who has been in charge. Aiden Fox, who is the head of the analytics team now, has been praised by management and coaches time and again.
They've made effective use of data at times — but is the department as well-supported as it could be? Whereas other teams, such as the Hurricanes, hire software engineers in-house, the Canucks have not. They don't appear as nimble as they could be.
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