Bruins Name Ryan Nadeau Director of Hockey Operations and Analytics

[Frisbetarian]

I'm surprised the naming of a Director of Analytics is not already being discussed in this most excellent forum. The Bruins have been ahead of the NHL curve on the use of advanced stats for a while, but now are planning to take things to another level, which won't be prohibitively expensive and could yield some nice benefits. Kudos to the Bruins; Ryan is a great guy, very committed to the team and always looking for new ways to assess players. 

 

[Duende Roomer]

I always loved his restaurant reviews in the Phoenix.

 

[ForceAtHome]

I'm surprised the naming of a Director of Analytics is not already being discussed in this most excellent forum.

 
It was mentioned, though it looks like not really discussed, two weeks ago in another thread.

 

[cshea]

Bumping this a bit, but there has been a big shift in NHL front offices this summer towards analytics. The Bruins have bad Nadeau for a while, but he was given the analytics title this year. Brendan Shannahan cleaned house by firing Dave Poulin and Claude Loiselle and brought in 28-year old Kyle Dubas as Assistant GM. Dubas has an analytical background from when he was GM of the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the OHL. The Devils hired Sunny Mehta, a former professional poker player, as Director of Hockey Analytics and the big news today was that, according to Bob McKenzie, Tyler Dellow (@mc79hockey on twitter) has apparently been hired in some capacity by the Edmonton Oilers. Dellow was one of the more prominent analytics guys on twitter. He was an interesting follow, too bad we're losing him.

Anyway, the analytics craze appears to be sweeping the NHL. I find it fascinating, so it'll be interesting see how teams further develop Corsi/Fenwick and other metrics as well as how teams adapt and use the analytics to construct rosters.

 

[Kenny F'ing Powers]

I'm under the impression that teams aren't really playing with current Corsi/Fenwick formulas, but are instead creating their own proprietary formulas. I believe in order to even get into these analytics departments, you have to essentially sign your life away to ensure the formulas remain exclusively with the team(s).

 

[Red Right Ankle]

Yeah, it would be interesting to see what these teams are doing... but we likely will not see a damned thing, sadly.

 

[cshea]

If anyone is looking for a primer on hockey analytics, Scott McLaughlin posted an excellent piece on week.com. Well worth a read.

http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/hockey/bruins/scott-mclaughlin/2014/08/06/hockeys-advanced-stats-here-stay-what-do-you

 

[Hildy]

Here's Fluto Shinzawa with an analytics overview that appears to have three different lede paragraphs; some interesting tidbits nonetheless. He confirms KFP's thinking about Corsi/Fenwick.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2014/08/09/nhl-brink-intelligence-explosion/rzB1N81iptBsR1NQkslbGM/story.html?p1=Article_InThisSection_Bottom