Tim Barnes recently received a major promotion from the Washington Capitals.
The team’s longtime director of hockey analytics is now an assistant general manager, joining draft maestro Ross Mahoney and salary cap expert Don Fishman with the same title. The 2025-26 campaign marks Barnes’ 11th season with the organization after initially being hired by the Capitals as a part-time consultant in 2014-15.
The Athletic’s Murat Ates was the first to notice Barnes’ new role on the club’s updated management page.
“As director of hockey analytics, Barnes was instrumental in incorporating data-driven decision-making into the day-to-day processes of the hockey operations department, overseeing the development of player valuation systems, trader tools for management, predictive frameworks for roster portfolio term risk, and technology to convert the insights of hockey operations management, scouts, and coaches into actionable metrics,” the Capitals’ description of Barnes’ previous role reads.
The Capitals’ management structure sees the three assistant GMs — Barnes, Mahoney, and Fishman — report to Chris Patrick, the Capitals’ senior vice president and general manager. Brian MacLellan, the team’s previous GM, oversees them all as the team’s president of hockey operations.
Barnes, who previously used the pseudonym Vic Ferrari, was a pioneer in advanced analytics through his now-defunct hockey statistics blog, “Irreverent Oilers Fans.” There, he would coin the term “Corsi,” now used to represent shot attempts, and formulate many of the methods widely used today to evaluate individual players.
Since Barnes’ hiring, the Capitals have enjoyed significant success, winning the Metropolitan Division six times and capturing two Presidents’ Trophies as the league’s best team over the last 11 seasons. The Capitals also captured their first Stanley Cup championship in 2018. The club also appeared to avoid a complete rebuild at the end of Alex Ovechkin’s career, successfully undergoing a massive retooling of their roster in the summer of 2024.
During that offseason, the Capitals also made league-wide waves when they purchased the popular salary cap website CapFriendly and shut it down for public use. The primary goal of the acquisition was to build off the existing infrastructure, incorporate their in-house analytics, and establish a valuable interface they could use moving forward.
When they bought the platform, the organization also brought in the three Davis brothers, Chris, Ryan, and Jamie, who ran the website. Currently, the brothers comprise three of the four analytics-based staff members listed in the Capitals’ directory. Jamie holds the title of director of hockey technology, while Chris and Ryan are listed as hockey technology assistants.
H.T. Lenz has now assumed Barnes’s former position as director of hockey analytics. The Vienna, Virginia native was a standout forward at the University of Vermont and also played one year (2014-15) of professional hockey with the ECHL’s Utah Grizzlies. Lenz has been with the organization for just over 10 years, starting as a hockey operations assistant at the age of 26.