When you make an inflammatory comment, often times you need to have some sort of facts backing up your statement. That seems to be a concept that goes right over Pierre McGuire’s head based on his most recent comments on hockey analytics.
https://twitter.com/James_J_Gordon/status/712616512650092544
Scientifically speaking and with modern medicine, it is definitely something that can be measured.
The battle between the new school and the old school in hockey isn’t anything new. It has been an ongoing narrative in every single sport the past decade or so. The most notable sport was baseball and it even spawned an Oscar nominated movie, Moneyball. Getting as much tangible and relevant information is the key in not only modern sports but modern life. Why do we continually want to deny ourselves of info that can help us work more efficiently? Change can be different and difficult but it isn’t so scary that we should reject all new ideas. Maybe as time passes we fear for our own irrelevance. It certainly seems to be the case with old Pierre.
There is of course a happy balance between the two. You don’t need to be a mathematician to understand the basics of hockey analytics, but by the same token it shouldn’t be expected of you to understand an expected goals model from any number of hockey analysts out there. It is time for Pierre to get with the times as he has been apart of the game for so long. I just hope that time doesn’t pass him by.
