On Tuesday, analytics staffers representing nearly all 32 NHL teams traveled to Ball Arena for the first ever Hockey Analytics League Operations (HALO) Meetings & Conference. The event, hosted by the Colorado Avalanche, brought people from across the NHL to hear from panelists, including Avalanche General Manager Chris MacFarland and Head Coach Jared Bednar, about the use of analytics in hockey and its growth in the sport. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Arik\u00a0Parnass, Avalanche Director of Analytics,\u00a0is the one who spearheaded the conference\u00a0with the idea of bringing\u00a0analytics personnel from around the league together, since they\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0often travel.\u00a0Parnass\u00a0said\u00a0that the decentralization of the NHL Draft\u2014an event that\u00a0would normally be a gathering place for analytics personnel\u2014gave\u00a0him the idea to create this conference.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should find a time and a place for us all to be together and be able to talk about issues that are\u00a0relevant to all of us in our industry,\u201d\u00a0Parnass\u00a0said. \u201cMeet with data providers. Help foster the public and people who want to get involved and get jobs and help them out. So that was always on my mind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Parnass\u00a0added that MacFarland gave him\u00a0the go-ahead\u00a0and encouraged the conference at the end of last summer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the Avalanche, Parnass said that analytics is one of the many lenses through which decisions are made, starting from the top.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cChris and (Avalanche President of Hockey Operations) Joe (Sakic) are phenomenal at\u2014they’ve been open-minded from the start and believing that [analytics are] an important part of decision-making,\u201d\u00a0Parnass\u00a0said.\u00a0\u201c…They\u2019re great about having this ability to blend all these\u00a0opinions from different people in the organization together to come to the best possible decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Parnass\u00a0said the boom and exponential growth in analytics over the last decade or so has been unbelievable, adding that its growth in other sports has led to its acceptance in hockey.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat type of acceptance also wouldn\u2019t be possible without my phenomenal group,\u201d\u00a0Parnass\u00a0said. \u201cFrom Dawson [Sprigings] coming on board early on to the department we have today, they\u2019ve each raised our ceiling and what\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0been able to provide to\u00a0different parts\u00a0of the organization.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
One of the panelists at the conference was Mike Kelly,\u00a0Director of Analytics & Insight at\u00a0Sportlogiq\u00a0and an analyst for NHL Network.\u00a0Since entering the analytics space 10 years ago, Kelly said\u00a0its\u00a0grown immensely.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was still a lot to do with just simple shot metrics,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cObviously, the private analytics companies that have come into\u00a0the space\u00a0have added a lot in terms of the granularity of data and micro stats. Tracking data\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0come in over the last number of years has\u00a0grown it\u00a0as well. So, just the sheer amount of\u00a0information\u00a0that the teams\u00a0are able to\u00a0access has grown\u00a0hundredfold.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Additionally, Kelly spoke about\u00a0Bednar\u2019s interview at the conference and had high praise for the way the Avs\u2019 bench boss\u00a0incorporates analytics\u00a0and the team\u2019s analytics department as a whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know every coach in the league,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cI\u2019ve\u00a0certainly talked to many of them over the years [who] have a decent handle, to some degree, on\u00a0incorporating this kind of stuff (analytics) and how some teams are doing it. There may be\u00a0coaches who do it as well as Jared Bednar. I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know any that do it better than he does. And I think what he talked about messaging, and\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not necessarily 28.3% of the time,\u00a0x,\u00a0y\u00a0and z,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0third and this [stat] or\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a027th\u00a0at that.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0very simple\u00a0[and]\u00a0data driven, but spoken in a language that the recipient, in this case the player, can understand.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0the most effective way to do it at any level.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd Arik Parnass is one of the\u00a0brighter\u00a0minds in\u00a0the space.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0been here for a long time.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0got the trust of the coaching staff.\u00a0He\u2019s\u00a0got the trust of the front office. And to see how seamlessly interwoven it all is\u00a0is\u00a0a credit to him and his group.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kelly said that the conference was incredible for the hockey analytics community and\u00a0its\u00a0the first of its kind at this scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the most well-run conferences I\u2019ve been to in a number of years,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cAnd I think\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0something that hopefully other cities around the league [and] other teams around the league will want to host. And hopefully the first of many to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Tuesday, analytics staffers representing nearly all 32 NHL teams traveled to Ball Arena for the first ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-583862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}