What is your philosophy on analytics?
I love it. What I love about it is I love information. What I’ve tried to do is surround myself with as many young, smarter people than me, more learned in that area than me, and they give you information. Sometimes, the information they give you, you don’t think it’s very good, but lots of times it’s great ideas. I hired a kid last year; I phoned out to the University of Michigan, I said I need a math guy, a real smart guy, just graduated, real good social skills, loves hockey. Can you find me that guy? Couple days later, it just so happened my kids knew who he was. We put him in our office next to our video coach, I said, “I don’t know what your job is, figure it out.” My point is pretty soon that guy was making a huge impact. He had found things that we could use, reoccurring situations in the game, that led to success. Staying on offense, or getting out of the defensive situation fast, it was a great little thing he gave me. The next thing you know he’s evaluating my pregame talks. I come in after and say, “what did I say?” He’d tell me. There’s a 24 year old kid making you better. There’s so many great ways to use information that’s great, you just have to make sure it makes sense; you can’t cloud your vision of what’s going on. That to me is what analytics is.
