Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Welcome to week eight and this week we are extremely fortunate to have two guest lectures that I think you're really, really, really going to enjoy.
Our first guest is Jack Han and if you have not heard of Jack before, he's an extremely bright hockey mind. Formerly the assistant coach of the Toronto Marlies, player development, scouting and analytics assistant for the Toronto Maple Leafs, video coach and analytics coordinator for the McGill University women's hockey team. He also wrote for the Montreal Canadiens official website. Assistant coach for college Gendabri Buff in Montreal. He is exactly who you want to be listening to if you're interested in the new ideas that are percolating through the hockey industry right now. He also writes the Hockey Tactics newsletter, which is jhan j h a n h k y.substack.com I provided a link to it on the course reading section of your brightspace. This is going to be beginning our week on hockey analytics and it's something that I think you may be slightly familiar with. Maybe this is something you're extremely passionate about. Maybe you, you care a great deal about this type of work. Maybe you don't. That's okay. This is definitely something that if we were teaching this course 20 years ago, would certainly not have been a week. I mean, this is something that's emerged in the last decade or so as a full fledged part of the industry. And even if it's not something that directly relates to your field, understanding the ways in which you can evaluate player performance and team success in this fashion is extremely important. I think truly one of the most beneficial guest lecturers we're going to have just in terms of career advice is Jack. Jack gives some very frank advice regarding how you should negotiate, how you should think of these positions that directly addresses the stage of career that you are in right now as a fourth year student here at Brock. He speaks directly to people he's worked with at Brock and I think he's an extremely valuable voice that I would like. I was just so pleased with some of the things that he was able to share. So again, make sure you're writing things down when you're listening to Jack, because you're gonna have to be including them on your audio response a little bit later on. I also wanted to again, thank you for those of you who continue to do that as a practice that you'll, you'll be rewarded for it in the end when you are evaluated on the audio responses. I really appreciate hearing it. I go back and I listen and think, oh, they are listening. They are absolutely following along and it's a great feeling. So when you're listening to Jack, note down anything you think is interesting, write down the time, make it easier on yourself when you are submitting your audio responses. Our second guest lecturer is going to be Dom Luchin from the Athletic and Dom Sick, fantastic in his own right, and is filled with lots of great advice as well. But let's first dive into this notion of hockey analytics and what is it and why are we spending any degree of time on it at all?
I think it's extremely important that we characterize this discussion, contextualize this discussion as that of a change in ideas that occurred in professional sports in the basically in the beginning of the 21st century. And you're probably familiar with Moneyball, you're probably familiar with that story, perhaps you've seen the movie, perhaps you have not. But I would caution you not to imagine the sort of world of analytics as being simply the story of data driven search for market inefficiencies in baseball and then other sports seemingly trying to capture their version of that. I think that too often that gets characterized as analytics. And this is something that is very near and dear to me, this notion of what is analytics. And just imagine to yourself this could be a question that you have to answer your own very soon.
If I asked you what is an analytic, what is an analytic for determining the success of success of a business or a professional sports franchise or a movie or anything really that requires measurements of success, you're going to get wildly different definitions of this word. And in the business community and perhaps even in other courses in this university, you have used other definitions of the word analytics. And one of the things that that I think in contemporary discourse and in sports discourse certainly we can get pretty hung up on this notion of what analytics is or is not. So for instance, if you're a soccer fan right now, and if you follow soccer at all, if you don't, that's okay. Well stay with me for a second here. And if you are thinking about the most simplistic ways of measuring shots on enduring a game, if you hit a pause menu on a FIFA game, if you've known this from when you were a kid, there are two measurements of shots, one being shots and one being shots on target. It's extremely basic things. Well, one of the early, quote unquote analytics that were introduced to hockey was Corsi, pioneered by a man named Jim Corsi, a former goaltending coach for the Buffalo Sabres. And he starts measuring not just the Shots that reach the goalies, but the ones that miss the net as well. And this measurement, this metric, this statistic becomes referred to as Corsi. It's one of the earliest statistics. In your readings, you actually hear about one of these stats in its sort of infancy now in soccer. Is that considered some sort of high minded analytic. No, this is a basic rudimentary statistic. And so many of the stats you hear about when you're recording hockey statistics and evaluating of these fancy stats, some can seem impenetrable. And in some sports they are extremely complex.
Look, baseball has had a lot longer to mature in this space and some of the measurements are legitimately complex and extremely difficult to sort of break down into their component parts. But that's not necessarily the case in hockey quite yet. And some of the statistics are quite easy to understand, but they sit behind this veil of impenetrability because they are labeled with the a word. Analytics. This thing that seems to be a castigation of traditional forms of understanding the way we play hockey, this is a foolish and I think misguided way of imagining that hockey teams operate today in this industry. This isn't about simply coming up with ways to sort of devalue traditional forms of evaluation. This is a way of trying to quantify success in different ways and failure in different ways as well. And I think that that's a very important part of the way we look at things. And putting yourself in one camp or another is, I think, a foolish strategy for many of you who are entering into the, the industry itself. In fact, I've taught this course many times. I've had an exercise which there are sort of two camps. One in favor of disbanding an analytics department and one in favor of an expansion of the analytics department. You have to spend based on a salary cap. And every single year that I do this course, I come in expecting the younger generation of students to of expansion of analytics department. And I'm yet to come across a majority decision in that way. Yet I'm noticing a lot of resistance that occurs towards the notion of whatever analytics is in the minds of students because it's based in this dichotomous relationship between traditional and sort of analytically minded ways of viewing hockey. So don't think in these terms of in this dichotomous way. It's not a good idea and it doesn't do either side of the debate any service.
So when Jack is talking about the ways in which he found a career for himself, it's not so much about the fact that he's a super genius, which of course he is extremely intelligent and extremely hard working. But it's his ability to generate positive outcomes for himself based on his own unique skill set that is something I found extremely unique About Jack in your readings in your the article for this week. It sort of helps explain the development of these statistics and how they've been started to be used in their various sports. But again, if you have no familiarity with this as a subject matter, go read up on it. Go and have a look around, see if you can sort of parse some of those statistics that give you an idea of what course he is, which is basically again, a measurement of shots directed at the net. But another gentleman, a blogger and a Calgary Flames fan at this point was a man named Matt Fenwick, and I believe he's a math teacher in a secondary school in Alberta. And his thought was, hey, look, blocking shots, that's actually a skill we should probably reward players for for that skill. So Fenwick became a measurement of you measure these shots towards the net minus blocked shots because then you could demonstrate the effectiveness of blocking shots. And in that statistic, for instance, you can see a marriage between the old and new ways of thinking. It's a quantification of a skill that is traditionally seen as part of the old way of knowing the game, whatever that means. So I encourage you have an open mind if you're totally sold on this notion of analytics. If you're like, yes, I'm a believer. You, you don't have to convince me. I totally love this stuff. Then focus on what Jack is telling you from a career angle, how he sort of plotted a career for himself and demonstrated his worth. And lastly, before I pass things off to our guest lecturer, I want to note that he is extremely interested in questions. So if you have any questions, pass them along to me because he wants to use them in his weekly newsletters that he passes out on his substack, the hockey tactics newsletter. So if you have a question for Jack and anything involving the the modern game, not about his life necessarily, but though you can or about your favorite team, even pass them along to me. I'll get them a Jack and he'll put them in his newsletter.
Make sure you're noting down any important points and with no further ado, I will pass things off to Jack Han and our discussion of hockey analytics and making a career in this.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: We are.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: So, so fortunate to be joined by Jack Ham. Jack, thank you so much for joining.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: 4 p.97 here at Brock University.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Well, I'm happy to be here, Taylor.
You know, as we mentioned before we start recording, I've actually worked with a couple of Brock alums who's, who's graduated from this program, Kyle Dubas being the more famous one.
But, but it's, you know, it's obviously a very exciting field to be in. It's also a very competitive field.
I'm hoping to bring a slightly different perspective and actually, you know, give the students a little bit of, you know, tough love or, or good information in terms of how to prepare for a career in this field and maybe, you know, a few tips on how to make the most of whatever opportunity you get.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: Jack, what a perfect introduction. That's fantastic. Jack, let's start, let's start at the beginning.
What were your earliest experiences with the game of hockey?
[00:10:19] Speaker A: So just to kind of give you like a 30 second recap of who I am, I got my start working hockey actually with the Montreal Canadiens on the digital content side. So I was a beat writer for the team website. I also managed a team's social media account in the 2013-14 season.
After actually doing the course that season, as someone who's grown up with the game in Montreal, someone who's played growing up, I realized that there, it seems like there is room in the game for someone like me who's maybe more analytically minded. And the following season I decided to kind of. Well, first of all, my contract wasn't renewed, which is a reality of the business.
But when that happened, I decided that I wanted to keep working in hockey, but more on the coaching and hockey upside. So for the next three seasons, I became a video coach, slash analytics coordinator for the McGill University women's team.
And after those three years, I became, as far as I know, the first person to go from youth sports, women's hockey, straight to the NHL. When Kyle Dubas approached me for a job as a player development analyst with the Toronto Maple Leafs. After spending three seasons with the Leafs in player development, hockey ops, and then as an assistant coach with with the Marlies, I left the organization during the pandemic, which generally is a bad time to leave a job.
But since then I've been working as a consultant for a variety of players and teams. And also I've started writing again, whether it's on Twitter or on my personal blog or newsletter.
And now I make a full time living creating content online ebooks related to hockey tactics and specifically NHL tactics, and also consulting for teams such as the Connecticut Whale and also the Zsc Lions in, in the Swiss League.
So, you know, all that said, I, I've been in the game now at the pre, at the pro level for about 10 years.
It's, it's actually quite an unlikely story because I was born in China and we moved to Montreal when I was 6 years old.
My parents didn't play the game. They didn't know the first thing about hockey. And to. Now, finally, to answer your question, my first contact with hockey was when we first moved to Montreal around 96, 97.
The big rivalry at the time were the Detroit Red Wings and the Colorado Avalanche.
And so my first exposure to hockey was watching them beat the crap out of each other on tv, you know, like with the Claude Lemieux, Chris Draper saga. So, so that was my first exposure to hockey. And then a lot of my friends played growing up, so I, I kind of followed them into it.
I didn't play at a super high level. I wouldn't say that I was really extremely passionate about the game when I first started playing. In fact, I was the worst player on my team. You know, the first couple of years of organized hockey I played and then I stopped for a few years and then when I started back up again when I was 11, 12, 13, that's when, you know, there were, they started being kind of content online about how to play hockey better, how to, you know, off ice drills that you can do. I remember also asking my parents to buy me, you know, books and CDs and DVDs about stick handling. And um, so basically I brought like a very kind of academic perspective to playing hockey because basically nobody I grew up with really took the time to show me how because they didn't know how. So I kind of had to learn all by myself, whether it's via books or videos or kind of in a very academic setting. And I think that kind of molded my whole perspective on hockey because, you know, I didn't play major, junior or pro. But you know, I think I, I did okay with the resources I had. And I just think that with all the information available now, there's a way for you to deepen your understanding of our sport academically. And through that I think you can kind of expand your potential and I think it's a really great way to, you know, kind of live your, your passion for the sport.
[00:14:52] Speaker C: Well, Jack, you've answered so many of my questions right there. That's a, that's an amazing journey. I love your, your description there of your, your academic interest in learning the game itself. When you were a player because you seem to have also translated that also into your, into your career as well. There's so many stops along the way that I want us to take some time and allow you to elaborate on. Let's start with McGill. When you, when you arrive with McGill and with the women's team as a video analyst and analytics coordinator, what was your sort of initial impression? What was the, what was the learning curve like when you started with McGill?
[00:15:19] Speaker A: So it's a very important, I think, lesson when you're looking to start out. So if you're looking to kind of bridge that gap between, you know, studying sports management versus getting your first, whether it's internship, part time job or full time job, you got to realize that it's very difficult to kind of step right into the top level of the game. But on the flip side, it's also quite easy to get a foothold, you know, in one of the lower levels. Because the farther down you go in hockey, the more there's going to be people who are actively looking for help from people just like, you know, you or me or a fourth year university student with an interest in pursuing this career. So what happened at McGill was, so I got let go for my job with the Canadiens and then I kind of had a couple of months to think about what I wanted to do over the summer.
And one of the things that I, I thought of was, so I, I did my undergrad at McGill and a few of my classmates actually played on the women's hockey team. And I, so I, I knew of the program, you know, they had a very strong women's hockey program back then.
They had a, you know, several Olympians come through that program. Their head coach, Peter Smith, went to the Olympics twice, I believe, was the assistant for Team Canada, won two gold medals with, with the team.
So I knew that, you know, this side of the Montreal Canadiens, one of the highest level coaches and one of the highest level programs in terms of hockey on the island of Montreal, was actually the McGill Women's Program. So I figured, let me reach out to see if they'd be interested to have somebody, you know, whether it's on the analytics side or the video side or anything else really.
And as it turned out, the Martlets, the markets former video coach, had moved on, you know, to pursue another line of work. And then Peter was actively looking for a video coach and he was actually having a lot of trouble finding the right person. So it was kind of, you know, serendipity because we found each other at the right moment, at the perfect moment, in fact.
But it just goes. Goes to show that, you know, this is a very, very big program with a big reputation, a big kind of, you know, in terms of a lot of success, but they still had trouble recruiting the right people.
So the lesson that taught me was, you know, if you're somebody looking to start out in hockey, you know, you might write to 25 or 32 NHL teams and not hear back, but, you know, try AHL teams or ECHL teams or maybe a major junior team or even a junior B team or, you know, U18 team. Somewhere there's somebody out there who needs your help if you're willing to put in the time and effort. So that's the first thing.
[00:18:21] Speaker C: Great lesson here, especially because again, they are all, all of us in this room are at a university right now with, with a women's program, with a men's program. And certainly there. There are students in this class, students that have gone through this class that have worked with junior B, junior C teams. But I mean, we often talk about this U Sports, hockey in general is, is a great starting place. Can you speak to your experience working in youth sports? How did you find your experience with the quality of play? What were your level of resources like? Yeah, how would you describe your time during U Sports?
[00:18:49] Speaker A: So the. The first thing, which, you know, it was a minus per turn to big plus was the first thing that Peter asked me to do was if basically said if. If I wanted to work in analytics for a team, I also had to take over as the video coach because that was the role that, you know, was the most. That was a more important frame.
And what ended up happening was after learning, you know, how to operate the video system and how to, you know, operate the camera and all that, I actually found that it really sped up my work as an analyst because I was able to track events directly off of the video software. So we used a software called Stiva, which is an older software that I think a lot of US sports teams still use.
But basically I was able to reprogram the software where every key that I hit logged, whether it's shot, attempt, whether it's exit or entries. And then I was able to export all of these events into a CSV file. And then I was able to do a lot of manipulation in terms of figuring out which lines or which D pairs drove results for a team and so on and so forth. So that was a really great coincidence because, you know, if you go, let's say, to the NHL, the AHL level, the video and the analytics side of, of hockey ops, they're pretty distinct. Like they be, these roles would be filled by different people.
And so I found it was actually really great to kind of be that two on one person to start with because it gave me a really great insight into how the workflow was like and that really helped me later on as well because basically if you want to, you know, the, basically the, the best way to get a job in hockey ops these days is either you have, you know, some sort of, sort of traditional playing background or you know, knowledge of scouting or you're really good with video or you're really good with stats. It's one of those three and probably a mix of the three.
[00:20:52] Speaker C: Great description there again of, of, of that journey and, and the, the wide level of experience you get working at with the U Sports team. Now you mentioned that's quite a jump from McGill straight to the, to the highest echelons. Can you speak about that? Can you speak to us about that, that, that jump you made? What were your initial impressions when you made the jump to pro hockey and what were some of the lessons you learned in those initial moments?
[00:21:15] Speaker A: So actually the, I, I forgot to mention, but one of the big upsides of working in U Sports is there's not that many games. So we had, including exhibition and tournament games, we had about 40 games a season.
And there's not a lot of travel like for McGill. We play in RSCQ and it's basically Montreal and we have four teams. No, sorry, three teams in Montreal and then two teams in the Ottawa area.
So what that does is, is that I was able to hold down a full time job and also put in a good 20, 25 hours a week at McGill. Whereas if you look at whether it's an AHL schedule or an NHL schedule, you know, we're talking about 70, 80 games a season.
You know, you're basically, if you're working in a league that has 80 games, it better be a full time job because you're not going to have time for anything else. Whereas if we're talking about maybe university hockey or perhaps, you know, junior B or perhaps European hockey, a lot of these leagues have fewer games. So if you're looking to start out, if you, you're not sure that it's going to be a full time career for you and you have, you know, a full time career that you're already kind of, you're well on your way, then start out with, in a league with fewer games.
The, the phf also is a league like that where we have about 20, 25 games a season.
So, you know, one of my good friends who, who, who does a lot of public hockey work now and now works for the Montreal Force of the phf, a guy by the name of Nick Nahabidian.
He's doing his CPA right now and, and I think he's about to get his title. But he's able to juggle all those things because again, he works for a team that plays in the league with only 25 regular season games.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: So when you make the jump to the pros, that's one of the first.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Learning curves, I'm sure, as you're dealing.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: With just a staggering amount of games. Yeah, right away. And what was your initial sort of role? What were your initial impressions when you, when you make that first jump? I mean, certainly there's a lot more materials, a lot more data. I can, I can't fathom how much more data you're dealing with when you get to the pro game. But what are some of the lessons you learned quickly about, well, making that jump?
[00:23:33] Speaker A: So again, I think that the difference is just the sheer number of games in terms of the workload. There is certainly you have more to do per day, but also there are more game days. So that's going to make a very big difference in terms of, you know, if anybody listening to this is lucky enough to have, you know, to get a break and to be offered an NHL job, there's a few kind of practical things that I would suggest.
First of all, make sure that the financials make sense for you. If you have to move halfway across the country to get this job, ask for enough money.
Make sure that you ask for a multi year contract. Because if you don't and you're on a one year contract and you have to move and you know, something happens where maybe the GM gets fired, the coach gets fired, there's new, there's new ownership. You want to be protected because most of these jobs are contractual. They're not full time permanent positions.
So, you know, if, let's say you have a strong programming background and a strong hockey background, which is the case for somebody that I spoke with recently who asked me kind of those same, same questions, and you're being recruited to work in an analytics position for an NHL team halfway around the country, ask for a three year contract and they'll probably end up giving you two. Do not settle for a one year contract. And you know, you're probably going to leave money on the table. To work for a pro hockey team as opposed to doing the same thing for, you know, a company in another industry. But at least don't shortcharge yourself in terms of termination. Right? Ask for a multi year contract.
So the first year I worked in Toronto, I kind of didn't follow my own advice. Kyle offered me one year at an amount that I thought was really fair. And the other thing that really tipped the balance for me was that in the first year he didn't ask me to move. So I was able to actually still work from Montreal, where I lived at the time and where I live right now.
And then a couple of times a month the Maple Leafs actually, you know, bought, bought me a plane ticket, got me down to Toronto and then I was able to meet face to face with a lot of my colleagues. But most of the work was done remotely on my computer, which is a situation that again, I think it's a good bargaining chip because it really reduces your level of risk in terms of having to kind of, kind of uproot yourself.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: That's fantastic advice and that's advice that I think, you know, a lot of these students are in need of, you know, what to even do if you do get this and not to just get completely starstruck by the idea of working for a team and willing to uproot your life and do a whole bunch of other things for what can be a very, very, very short term situation. So what were the biggest sort of misconceptions that you think exist or what are the biggest misconceptions that exist about the work that you did, whether it was on the McGill side or the pro side about the kind of work you do and also as it relates to the wider hockey public.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: So the one thing that I believe very strongly in is that even if you're working in a data oriented position, your job is not about data, it's about time. In fact, your job is to be a help in someone else's time management. So I'll give you an example.
When I was at McGill, I did most of Peter's pre scouts. So the fact that I, you know, download two games of our next opponent, I go through them, I clip them, I set up the playlist, and then I give them a preliminary playlist to, to go through and to then like filter down, that saves them about five hours, if not more.
So that's the value really. It's, you know, if you're someone making 50,000 working an entry level NHL job, you're probably saving.
I don't know, $250,000 upstream throughout a season just because you're doing stuff that other people could do but you know, they're better off not doing. So that's your value. So you should be able to easily provide a five or ten time, you know, return on, on, on investment on your, on your salary, essentially. So, so really that's what you aim for. And you know, I had an experience recently where we're in the process of buying a house and we worked with a very good real estate agent and you know, her job not only is to help us save time, but also manage our anxiety.
And it sounds kind of silly for me to say this, but hockey is the same as anything else in life. You know, people are anxious and especially in an industry where it's so competitive and it's so, everything is so transparent, right? Like, you know, that, you know, on, on any, in any given season, like half the team in the league, they're, they're in the world of hurt because they're, they're just scraping to make the playoffs or they're just scraping to kind of, you know, put points on the board.
And you know, you can be very good at your job and you can, you can do a great deal, but if you're someone who's actively increasing the anxiety level people around you, you're not going to be there for very long. And the opposite is true as well. Like, you know, I, I think there's, there's a case be made that pro sports is very, you know, there's a lot of nepotism in pro sports and certainly I think it's quite easy for people in authority positions to give jobs to their friends or to their relatives or their kids. But at the same time, I think there's a rationale for that because your level of anxiety is lowered when you hire people that you already know.
So the two takeaways for folks who are in their fourth year university, first of all, is the goal of networking and to talk to people and to create relationships, is that you're basically coming in warm with people and you're reducing their anxiety level. And then once you get the job again, to be consistent, to show up, to do a job properly, to do things with minimal supervision. These are all things that are going to help lower the anxiety level of your immediate superiors, which are in turn going to improve your financial outlook and your career success.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: Jack, that's great. That's just fantastic advice. I mean, that's great advice. No matter what area of sport you're looking to get into. But certainly the hockey industry is no exception.
There's, there's something about your work that really fascinates me, and that's your, your outreach to the public and your ability to distill very complex things to the public very quickly. It's something that you have done extremely well throughout your time, throughout your, your extremely unique career. Best so far.
Can you tell us about that, that decision and where you just develop that skill set and where you develop that interest in sort of communicating tactics to the public?
[00:30:47] Speaker A: I mean, I think I've had that interest for a while and even, you know, going back to my first NHL job with Montreal in, in 2013, 14, like, I, I felt this urge to kind of be a little bit more in depth.
You know, I, I kind of slowly start bringing up concepts such as coresi or such as, you know, lineup adjustment, stuff like that. And you know, I honestly, I got some pushback from my editor about that, but I think it just kind of showed that I had an interest for it and I had a knack for it.
And now because I'm my own boss, I'm able to really fully exploit that. But going back, like, my big talent in life is not playing hockey, it's writing.
So to, to give you an idea, when I was five years old, I was reading at a fifth grade level, and that's because I spent a lot of time with my, with my grandparents and they were both teachers and they didn't have any toys at their house. They only had books, so I would read.
Basically I was like a toddler reading, you know, books for elementary school kids. So I was always pre advanced for my age. And it's no different than a lot of players who ended up playing the NHL. You know, they were always advanced, more advanced on the ice. So I was always more advanced, you know, in a schoolroom setting.
So when, when it came time for me to, you know, leave Toronto and then reorient myself in, in a very unfavorable, you know, pandemic environment, I thought my biggest competitive advantage is I don't have to get on the ice to, to help people understand hockey or help people improve their understanding of, of how to play, I could just write about it, or I can, you know, make videos about it, or I can, you know, write ebooks about it.
And so, so basically the, like, it all came together because it was a competitive advantage for me to work in this way.
If any other NHL coach decided that, you know, all of a sudden they're going to start Writing a newsletter or start writing ebooks or tweeting. They're not going to do it as well as I do, even though they know more about hockey and they have more experience than I do. Right. They're just not. Because I've been working on this skill set for.
I'm 30, 33 now. I've been working on this skill set for 28 years, at least, whereas they're going to have to start from zero. So it's just simple economics, right? It's just division of labor or it's comparative advantage, and I'm just making full use of it.
[00:33:15] Speaker C: And you really do. I mean, again, I encourage everyone listening to this to sign up to your newsletter, to. To. To sign up to your substack. I mean, it is, it is fantastic. I mean, it again, since the earliest days of me following you on Twitter, I mean, you have, you have communicated such complex things that take coaches on whiteboards, banging on the glass, you know, about four checks and things like that that take decades for, for players and, and students of the game to learn. You, you, you explain it in 15 minutes. It makes so much sense. And I only have one more question for you, Jack, and again, I really, really, really appreciate your time here today.
How do you see the relationship between data and hockey evolving over the next five years?
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Well, well, that's a good question. I mean, I'm, I. It's a question I think about on a regular basis.
The most accurate answer that I could give you is, I don't know.
But the way that, that I'm working now is I'm actually, I would say I'm tracking less stats and I'm, you know, using maybe less stats in my process than I, than I used to. And again, this is because my comparative advantage is elsewhere. So there are lots of people online who have a lot of time and a lot of, you know, determination. A lot of.
You put in a lot of effort to manually track stats and, you know, it's no longer an area of comparative advantage for me to do that. If I ever, you know, need very specific help in that area, I'm now better off hiring somebody. Right?
And, or, or paying for a service such as whether it's NSATs or SportLogic to have those things provided to me.
So basically, the, the upshot is the game of hockey itself is it's not going to change all that much in five years. You know, if, if we hop into a time machine and we look at what hockey looks like in five years, we're going to see some differences, but for the most part, it's going to be the same game. There's going to be one puck on the ice, there's going to be two goals.
Probably still the same dimension. The rink is probably going to still be the same dimension. The players will look more or less the same. The Tactics might look a little bit different, but they're still going to be recognizably similar to today's. So what I'm saying is, is that the relationship between data and, and hockey, the biggest change is going to be how it's presented and how it's communicated. It's not necessarily going to be the nature of the sport that's going to change. Right?
[00:35:53] Speaker C: Jack, thank you so much for your time here. On behalf of everyone here in 4p97 I really want to thank you for for, for speaking to all of you digitally and we wish you well. Again, the Hockey Tactics newsletter on Substack Is there anywhere else you'd like my students to to know about in terms of finding your work?
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Well, I mean, look, feel free to share my email with them. If ever any of them have a question about whether it's general career advice or specific career advice, feel free to send me an email.
I reserve the right to use the answer I give on on on my future newsletter because that's probably good. If one person has that question, then it's probably going to help more than one people.
But yeah. So if you'd like to get in touch if you have a question, then by all means, reach out.
[00:36:37] Speaker C: Thanks so much, Jack.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Right.
Chemical War Plastic Island Watch what the humans brew.
