For decades, the manner in which Bruins molded their rosters and built upon the foundation of its club didn’t differ all too much.
The “Big Bad Bruins” might have bullied their way to a pair of Stanley Cups in the 1970s, but an emphasis of size and snarl remained perhaps the defining characteristic of Bruins teams for the next 30 years — with skaters like Cam Neely and Milan Lucic carrying on the bruising tradition that Terry O’Reilly, Stan Jonathan and others established out on the ice.
But in 2019, with the influence of analytics, innovation and advanced statistics continuing to take root within the game, no NHL team can simply rely on size and strength along anymore to chart a road to success — for as much the hockey purists might bemoan such a development.
“You know, there’s a funny quote that Yogi Berra used to say,” Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs said Tuesday. “It’s like, ‘There’s lies, there are damn lies and then there’s statistics.’ I find it funny because there’s some times where maybe we get caught up in the wrong information and perhaps fall into some type of rabbit holes that may not bear any fruit.
“But if it’s all out there on the table we can determine just exactly what we feel is important for us as management, team owners, and the fans themselves can maybe look at their own data and determine what they feel is important.”
The Bruins have made major strides when it comes to incorporating analytics and other evaluating tools beyond simple statistics and the basic “eye test”.
Bench boss Bruce Cassidy has harped on the way that the efforts of Boston’s analytics department and his assistant coaches to contextualize such data has given the team “an unbiased opinion” when it comes to weighing roster moves, tinkering with special-teams play and other day-to-day adjustments over the course of a year.
That access to advanced data is set to expand across multiple fronts in 2019-20, with puck and player tracking technology set to become incorporated into every game and venue for the upcoming year.
This new technology, which was tested during the 2019 All-Star Game festivities back in January, will feature:
- 14-16 antennae installed in arena rafters
- Four cameras to support the tracking functionality
- One sensor added on the shoulder pads of every player on each team
- 40 pucks created with a sensor inside for each game
With this next wave of technology set to be installed in every arena next season, fans, media, team officials, scouts, coaches and players themselves will be able to comb over new facts and figures made available by a new system that can track skaters on the ice at 200 times per second.
“The puck and player tracking system can track pucks at a rate of 2,000 times per second in real-time with inch-level accuracy," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said back in January. "We'll instantaneously detect passes, shots, and positioning precisely. It will be equally accurate in tracking players; their movement, speed, time on ice -- you name it.”
Bettman added: “ We know our players are fast, their passes are precise and their shots are hard. In Vegas Golden Knights games against the Rangers (on Jan. 8) and the Sharks (on Jan. 10), we saw exactly how fast, how precise and how powerful they are. Amazingly, within the confines of our 200-by-85-foot rink,
Brent Burns
and
Jonathan Marchessault
each skated more than 3 miles.
William Karlsson
skated over 20 miles an hour. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The applications are endless."
From the perspective of NHL coaches and front-office personnel, this new tracking data can make things much easier from both the bench and high above the ice when it comes to evaluating players and monitoring in-game situations.
The NHL handed teams iPads with an SAP-NHL Coaching Insights App back in February, which allowed clubs to view ice time for individual players in real time, keep watch on individual shifts, analyze faceoff percentages, evaluate routes on zone entries and exits, chart where quality Grade-A chances are both generated from and how they were orchestrated and much more.
More and more data is expected to be available when tracking data is mandated at every arena in 2019. Not only will this information help on a game-to-game basis, but scores of new intel will be crucial for GMs and other personnel when it comes to assessing players that could join a team via free agency or trade. The opportunities are indeed endless.
“I like what the analytics can bring us,”
Bruins
president
Cam Neely
said Tuesday. “It’s good to look at that stuff. I think it really, a lot of it, I tell our department, ‘Ok, we’ve got the resources, how do we get wins from those?’ There’s a lot of information out there, but what do you do with it and how does it help us win hockey games. I think, when you look at offensive-zone starts, defensive-zone starts, inner-slot chances, all of those things that are tracked, it’s important for our coaching staff to look at it and say, ‘Ok, we need to do a better job here, we need to do a better job there. The analytics department, they’re really diving deep.”
It will be fascinating to see how integral tracking data will become in the NHL, not just when it comes to hockey ops, but in terms of the product for fans. Having this information available in real time could add an intriguing facet for TV broadcasts, impact the growing influence of sports gambling on a state-to-state basis and many more avenues.
“We’ve had extensive discussions about what that data means,’ Jacobs said. “We can sort of segue into fan engagement and maybe touch upon the topic of wagering, sports wagering, which is sort of, as state-by-state seems to be falling across this country and North America.
“So, yeah. This player data, obviously, is very important. It’s something we’d like to think the National Hockey League and NHLPA collectively own, and it is something when shared I believe will drive greater interest in the sport, which is wonderful and frankly, in my opinion, overdue.”
Still, while this deluge of new data could shift the way in which NHL teams conduct their business going forward, Neely noted that a happy medium can still be found between cold, hard statistics and more interpretive intangibles. How both fronts merge together to help a franchise build a contender stands as the next challenge for the Bruins and many other clubs.
“Sometimes, there’s these analytics darlings that are in the league that you look at it and go, ‘Well, are you going to win with that guy,'" Neely said. "May be great analytically, but are going to win with them? And those are things you’ve got to figure out from character and what his habits are on and off the ice.”
