Hockey Confidential (8 page)

BM:
Yes, sometimes it's down low from your midsection, but sometimes you like to go upstairs and give the overhead, overhand fist pump to the crowd with a look into the stands. But you're right, it's all relatively subdued.

Young John:
My dad always told me, “Don't ever celebrate, it's like saying the F word.” So when I was young, I'd put my hands in the air and then take them down. Actually, there probably was one for me: the World Juniors in Ottawa, against the Americans. When they went up on us 3–0, one of their players went by our bench and taunted us, with his hand to his ear. When I scored my second goal to make it 3–2, I did it back to them. I probably would like to take that one back, but it was a really emotional game. I try not to be too obnoxious.

BM:
I ask this question, and I already know the answer, but is it easier to score goals in hockey or lacrosse? The answer, in theory, should be hockey, because the net in lacrosse is a lot smaller and the goalie equipment is much bigger, but it's obvious by the number of goals scored in a game, it's lacrosse.

Young John:
In lacrosse, you have more control where the ball is going. It's
in
your stick, you're not on skates.

Uncle John:
In hockey, they have only one angle: up. In lacrosse, you can move the ball from high to low and shoot up or down. [
To Young John.
] By the way, you should use your backhand more than you do.

Young John:
He always tells me that. It's the only move he ever had in the basement when he would come over to play hockey with me. Forehand, backhand, deke, same move every time.

BM:
Where's it more dangerous in front of the net: in hockey or lacrosse?

Young John:
Lacrosse.

Uncle John:
Really?

Young John:
For sure. You can legally cross-check in lacrosse. Guys would cross-check you in the hips. And in lacrosse, you have to go through the middle, and that's where you can see the kids who are afraid. You have to have balls to cut through the middle in lacrosse, because you're taking your life into your hands.

Uncle John:
There's cross-checking off the ball in lacrosse, too. If your team has the ball, the other team can start cross-checking anyone who doesn't have the ball. That's intense

Young John:
I remember playing against Six Nations. Every defender had a wooden stick. When you went to set a pick, you know you were going to get destroyed. I would wear all sorts of extra equipment. I was a lot younger, I was 20 to 30 pounds lighter than them, and they'd just give it to you even if you didn't have the ball.

Uncle John:
I like a tough game, always have, but I don't know much [physical] intimidation should exist in sport. I've got a kid playing now. Do I really want him playing lacrosse and hockey and taking shots to the head with barely any penalties?

BM:
I'm sure you guys have heard the term “natural” or “pure” goal scorer, which on one level is counterintuitive because I think you guys would be the first to admit it takes a lot of hard work and practice to score, but there's no denying some guys simply have the knack, and that would be both of you.

Uncle John:
Positioning is everything for me in scoring goals. I think I put myself in a good spot to score. My skill level maybe isn't the highest in the game, but my sense of where to be—I just try to put people to sleep and then, when they least expect it . . .

BM:
Brett Hull used to subscribe to that theory. He would say he liked to be invisible until he got the puck on his stick in the right spot on the ice.

Uncle John:
In lacrosse, I would try to set up the guy playing defence against me. I would show him routine, same thing over and over again, do routine, do routine and let him think he was getting the better of me for a while, and when I could see he was relaxing, getting comfortable with my routine, that's when I'd break the routine, do something different and beat him for a goal. . . . I asked [Young John] once whether he considers himself a playmaker or a goal scorer. He said he's a goal scorer, which surprised me a bit. I kind of think of myself as a playmaker first, although when the game is on the line, I guess I like to be a goal scorer.

Young John:
When you talk about a natural or pure goal scorer, I think you're talking about some guys who don't look like they have the greatest skill set—they don't have a real hard shot or they're not fast or big—but when you talk about a guy like my linemate, Matt Moulson, or someone like Luc Robitaille, they have great scoring instincts and an ability to put the puck in the net. That's my definition of a natural goal scorer. Some guys have the skill set to be great goal scorers, some guys just have the knack; some have both, and those are the really great ones.

BM:
That precise moment when the puck or ball goes into the net, how does that feel? Can you put it into words?

Uncle John:
For me, it's the exact same feeling every time. It's satisfaction and gratification that all the hard work has paid off. Now when I score, I'm so happy inside. When you're older, you
need
that goal, really need it. At age 28, if you go two games without scoring a goal, it's called a slump. When you're 40, you go two games without a goal and you're washed up. I need those goals now for confidence. It makes me believe I still belong.

Young John:
I can't describe it. As a kid, I knew the objective is to score, and I felt if I could do that better than anyone else, it would help my team win and help me become the best at it. There's no emotion like it, nothing like scoring a goal. I'm driven by it.

BM:
Goal scorers get into the zone. How do you know when you're “in the zone”?

Uncle John:
In lacrosse, your stick has to be on. In lacrosse, the stick is everything. If your stick feels great, it seems like the game is so easy. Then things just seem to happen so naturally.

Young John:
Those moments are hard to explain because it's hard to stay at that level for any length of time, and when you are “in the zone,” you often can't figure out why you are. Usually, it means something good happened early. I remember a Belleville–Oshawa game—I wasn't feeling well at all, I slept only two hours the night before, and yet I scored a power-play goal, an even-strength goal, two shorthanded goals, had an assist and scored on the shootout to win the game. I didn't think I was going to play well in that game because I didn't feel good. But you start, things go your way, and it's as if some unseen thing is taking your skill to the next level. Why? No idea, none.

BM:
What about the flip side: the dreaded slump, when you can't do anything right?

Uncle John:
Superstitions get made on those times. You start thinking, “What did I do when I was playing really well?” If I'm struggling, I just ask myself, “Am I getting chances?” If not, I'll go do something else—make a defensive play, help the team in some way. You can't let it bring you down.

Young John:
I always grew up scoring goals, and I obviously don't like it when I'm not. So like a lot of guys, if I'm not scoring, I try to do other things. My first year in the NHL, I wasn't getting many chances, was not scoring. It's tough mentally; it can play with your mind. I learned a lot from that experience. I went 15 or 16 games without scoring—longest I've ever gone. It was good for me, but I didn't like it.

BM:
You mentioned superstitions. You have any?

Uncle John:
I like a pre-game nap. Is that a superstition? I don't think so. I don't have any.

Young John:
Not anything wacky. My superstitions are based more on preparation. There's no excuse to not play well, so it's more routine than superstition, I think. The one superstition I guess I have is that in junior, at the old [Oshawa] Civic Auditorium, there's small room, a medical room, and all the players would put their stick on the wall outside that room. But I would put my stick inside [trainer] Brian Boyes's medical room. I still do it now, always put my stick in the medical room. But that's about it.

Uncle John:
No intimacy the night before . . . for most of my career, anyway. [
He laughs.
]

BM:
Okay, guys, most important question: What's the deepest, darkest secret to your goal-scoring success?

Young John:
I just feel like I want it more than anyone else. Whether it's lacrosse or hockey, I always wanted to score. I feel like I wanted it more than anyone else. I still feel that way. I know everyone likes to score, but I just have this feeling that there's no one in the world who wants to score a goal more than me.

Uncle John:
I never went into a game saying I want to score. I just wanted to make the right play. That's how I got my opportunities to score. If you make the right play, you're going to get scoring chances for not just [yourself] but your team. Is there an actual secret to it? I don't know, but I can tell you I don't respect any goalies. I refuse to show them any respect. I think they're no good, because if you say a goalie is good, then you're giving that goalie an edge over you. I won't do that. It's a mindset, I guess. I hated stats, too. I hated milestones—you know, 500th goal or whatever. I hate that stuff, I didn't like the attention being on me.

Young John:
I'm not a big stats guy, either. I won't look at them, I won't look at league leaders. I just want to focus on playing well. That's where I'm focused.

Young John:
I'm not a big stats guy, either. I won't look at them, I won't look at league leaders. I just want to focus on playing well. That's where I'm focused.

BM:
Can you guys imagine what it'll be like when you're finished playing and there's no more goals to be scored?

Uncle John:
I'm okay with not scoring any more goals. If I don't play, if I retire, I'll be fine. I've scored my share. I was golfing with [ex–Buffalo Sabre] Rene Robert and someone asked him if he still plays any hockey. He said, “What kind of question is that? I'm retired.” I'll be the same way; you won't see me playing masters' lacrosse, I can tell you that. [
To Young John.
] You, on the other hand, you've got lots more goals to score. Lots.

Young John:
I'd like to play as long as he has. [
He points to Uncle John
.]

Uncle John:
[Young John] is a great player, but—and I tell him this all the time—he's at his best when he just puts his nose down and just goes to the net, when he doesn't get too cute and just goes for it. So do what I tell you. [
He laughs.
]

All these years later, I owe my high school math teacher an
apology, because I'm about to break a long-standing promise.

Sorry about that, Mrs. Uyenaka.

It was the final week of my Grade 12 year, June 1974, at Woburn Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Ontario. As I recall, I was in a state of high anxiety because the list of students who would be obliged to take the year-end final exam was soon to be posted. In order to be exempt from taking the exam, a student required a mark of at least 55 per cent.

It was going to be touch and go for me.

Math—or science, for that matter—had never been my strong suit. The written or spoken word? Write an essay or make a speech? Bring it on. An equation or formula? Find a solution? Get out of here. My brain is not wired to deal with it.

I approached Mrs. Uyenaka the day before the list was to be posted and asked her if I was going to make the cut at 55. She looked it up in her book, looked at me and shook her head.

“No, I'm sorry,” she said. “You have 53 per cent. You have to write the exam.”

I might not have known what a logarithm was—still don't, actually—but I damn sure knew if I had to write that final exam, I was not going to pass it. If I didn't pass the exam, I would fail Grade 12 math. If I didn't pass Grade 12 math, I wouldn't get the required credit for my high school diploma. If I didn't get my diploma—well, if you knew my mother, that was not an option.

I'd already chosen my six courses for Grade 13—two English, two history, French and family studies—so it wasn't as if I actually needed Grade 12 math as a prerequisite for anything, other than getting my diploma and graduating in good standing.

I showed Mrs. Uyenaka my option sheet for the next year, explained to her my innate inability to process numerical data, guaranteed her I could not pass the exam, told her there was no benefit to anyone—least of all me—to my writing that final exam, and then made her a solemn promise in the form of an offer I was fearful she
could
refuse.

“If you bump up my mark to 55 and exempt me from the final exam,” I pleaded, “I'll never, not ever, have anything to do with numbers or math for the rest of my life. I promise.”

She said she would think about it. The next day, she posted the class list with our marks alongside our names: Bob McKenzie 55.

Exempt.

I've never forgotten what Mrs. Uyenaka did for me that day, nor have I forgotten or broken the promise I made to her back then.

Until now.

Damn you, #fancystats!

We will likely look back one day on the 2013–14 NHL regular
season as the proverbial turning point, the year in which advanced statistics in hockey—a.k.a. #fancystats or analytics (Corsi, Fenwick, PDO, etc.)—went mainstream. Maybe “mainstream” is a bit of a stretch, but there most definitely was an awakening. A line was crossed. Advanced hockey stats became more of a talking point, started showing up more often in more prominent places. The debate over their merits, or lack thereof, became louder and longer and more spirited, waged in newspapers and on television, radio and the Internet and social media.

For that, we can thank the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The Leafs, and many of their fans, believed their 2013 playoff appearance—the historic third-period-and-overtime Game 7 meltdown against the Boston Bruins notwithstanding, to say nothing of the team's first playoff date since 2004 coming on the basis of a lockout-shortened 48-game regular season—was a portent of good things to come, a launching pad for a team headed in the right direction. But the purveyors of #fancystats said it before the 2013–14 season even began: the Leafs were cruisin' for a bruisin'. Their “puck possession” numbers (as measured by tools such as Corsi and Fenwick) were way too low; their save percentage and shooting percentage (PDO) was unsustainably high. It was, the hockey eggheads maintained, a perfect statistical storm.

The battle lines were clearly drawn. The Leaf season, for better or worse, was going to put #fancystats on trial.

That this was playing out in Toronto, of all places, only raised the stakes. Next to Mayor Rob Ford (no comment), Corsi and the Leafs might have been the hot-button topic in Canada's largest city in 2013–14.

“I don't think there's any question about that, the [Maple Leaf angle] pulled [advanced statistics] into the spotlight,” said Tyler Dellow, a Toronto-based lawyer and blogger (his blog can be found at www.mc79hockey.com) who has emerged as one of the foremost authorities on the use of analytics in hockey. “The Leafs are a big deal and Toronto is the centre of the [hockey and hockey media] universe. They raised the profile of the debate to a level that couldn't have happened anywhere else.”

The mercurial Maple Leafs, meanwhile, cooperated by providing a dramatic, season-long script. They went 11–6 in their first 17 games. Maple Leaf general manager Dave Nonis, speaking at a sports business management conference at that point in the schedule, made a remark along the lines of having had teams in the past that outshot their opponents and lost, but now the Leafs' Corsi—in his word—“sucks,” yet the team was winning.

For many in the mainstream media who either didn't like the creeping presence of #fancystats or perhaps just didn't like their zealous proponents, it was open season on the newfangled numbers. As the season wore on, the Leafs certainly looked like a playoff team. With less than a month to go, they had 80 points in 68 games. They sat third in the Eastern Conference and ninth overall in the 30-team NHL.

Critics of #fancystats were giddy with delight. They started doing their touchdown dance at the 10-yard line. We all know what happened next.

Incredibly, the Leafs lost eight straight games in regulation time, and then briefly stopped the bleeding with a pair of wins, before closing out the regular season with another four straight losses in regulation. They lost 12 of their final 14, all in regulation time, falling from third in the Eastern Conference to 12th in the span of less than a month. The Leafs' playoff hopes were incinerated into a mushroom cloud.

It was one of the most epic collapses in NHL history. It was also taken as vindication and massive victory for the #fancystats gang.

“As a person with some investment in seeing hockey analytics become more widely accepted, watching the Leafs collapse in slow motion after a season of taunting from the more traditional corners of the game was exceedingly gratifying,” Dellow said. “As a fan of irony, it might have been even better.”

Dellow said the Leafs were exceedingly fortunate to have piled up 80 points in their first 68 games; still, it was reasonable to expect they would have played well enough in the remaining 14 games to make the playoffs. That they didn't, Dellow said, was as much bad luck as anything else.

“They died as they lived—on the bounces,” Dellow said. “While the numbers guys were vindicated, in that we'd correctly identified the Leafs as a team that wouldn't make the playoffs, it also served as a reminder that you can't say
when
the luck will run out, just that it will.”

It mattered little that similar #fancystats forecasts of doom and gloom for the 2013–14 Colorado Avalanche never came to pass, that the Avalanche posted terrible Corsi, Fenwick and PDO numbers but dodged all the bullets and still finished with 112 points, second in the powerful Western Conference, third in the entire league. In advanced stats, as in any sport, you win some, you lose some. Some victories, though, end up having a greater impact than just another two points in the standings. Toronto's collapse, the fulfilment of the Leafs' #fancystats prophecy, was the analytics equivalent of a franchise-defining, we-walk-together-forever, last-second win for the ages.

The truth about advanced stats in hockey is that they're not
really all that advanced. (This from the guy who had to beg his way out of a Grade 12 math exam).

Advanced is more a relative term, given that goals, assists, points, penalty minutes and, more recently, plus-minus, have always been the standard currencies by which individual players were evaluated. Wins and losses, meanwhile, were always the norms by which teams are judged.

But if advanced stats in hockey aren't really all that advanced, they are most certainly new to the game—at least, relatively speaking.

Many proponents of #fancystats point to the advent of Corsi, the puck-possession metric, as perhaps the dawn, or at least the big breakthrough, of modern-day hockey analytics. There was no specific date when Corsi was born, though Dellow recalled the concept might have come up on message board chatter (on sites like the HF Boards at hfboards.hockeysfuture.com) amongst the number-crunching community as early as the NHL lockout of 2004.

Perhaps the first documented evidence of the actual statistic now known as Corsi—arguably
the
seminal moment in #fancystats history—appeared in 2006. Legend has it that Edmonton Oiler fan and blogger Vic Ferrari—the man, the myth, the legend— heard Buffalo Sabre goalie coach Jim Corsi explain in a radio interview how he counted shot
attempts
(totalling shots on goal, missed shots and blocked shots) instead of the conventional (and official) measurement of shots on goal. The story goes that Ferrari took that notion, worked with it and
voil
à
: Corsi—the concept, not the man—was born. It's believed Ferrari first wrote about it in any length on March 5, 2006, on his
Irreverent Oiler Fans
blog.

Gabe Desjardins, a native Winnipegger, lifelong Jets fan and electrical engineer who graduated from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, but moved to California's Silicon Valley to work in high tech, believes the #fancystats movement had much deeper roots, starting in almost prehistoric hockey times. As in the 1950s. Desjardins would know: he is, for all intents and purposes, one of the godfathers of hockey analytics, the individual (along with Corsi creator Ferrari) who has done the most groundbreaking work to pioneer the cause. He started writing about hockey analytics in 2003. In 2006, as Ferrari was writing about Corsi, Desjardins established
Behind the Net
(www.behindthenet.ca), the hardcore hockey analytics website. There isn't anyone today within the advanced stats community who doesn't pay homage to Desjardins as a master.

“We know the Montreal Canadiens of the 1950s were tracking plus-minus as a statistic long before it came into existence [in the NHL],” Desjardins said. “Some scorecards from the 1972 Summit Series have been found that showed [Team Canada coach] Harry Sinden was having someone [Ron Andrews, then the NHL's statistician] count shots in a ‘Corsi way.' We know Roger Neilson was scoring his players using shots for and shots against, so it's been going on for a long time.”

Incredibly, it appears at least one man, a true visionary, was looking at hockey in a complex, analytical, statistical way as far back as the early 1950s. Lloyd Percival—the man who pioneered everything from cutting-edge athletic training to injury treatment, to nutrition, to coaching methods, and the author of
The Hockey Handbook
, which Anatoly Tarasov, the godfather of Soviet hockey, credited as the blueprint for the development of Russian hockey—was doing work for the Detroit Red Wings in the early 1950s, but also for the St. Michael's Majors Junior A hockey club. In Gary Mossman's fine biography
Lloyd Percival: Coach and Visionary
, there is evidence that Percival was breaking down hockey games in a truly advanced analytical way. Not relatively advanced for the 1950s; advanced by even today's standards.

Of Percival's work with St. Mike's, Mossman wrote:

Percival was able to do things for [St. Mike's] that he was denied in Detroit. For example, he produced a seven-page “Hockey Survey Analysis” of a playoff game between St. Michael's and St. Catharines on March 19, 1952, in which body checks for both teams are recorded, categorized, counted according to location on the ice and the level of success, and connected to scoring chances. Shoot-ins and recovery rates are also totaled, positional play is analyzed and passes are tabulated according to their locations, their success rate and the reasons for their success. Furthermore, shots at and on goal are counted and the location from which they were directed is analyzed, and the time of puck possession inside the blue line is recorded for each team. Along with conclusions in each section, Percival presented [St. Mike's] with a summary of twelve “General” comments and recommendations for tactics and improved play for the next game in the series.

Not only was Percival apparently embracing rudimentary Corsi in 1952, he was light years ahead of his time on zone entries and recovery rates, to say nothing of coming up with tangible tactical changes for the next game based on stats compiled from the previous game. Percival's level of statistical sophistication was nothing short of incredible.

In more modern times, Desjardins also cited the pioneering concepts and written work of people such as Tom Awad and Alan Ryder, from the 1990s through to the present, as ample evidence of thinking-outside-the-box hockey statistics that pre-date Corsi. Also, the NHL's move to real-time stats around 1997 was a factor, as was Desjardins's own involvement in an advanced sports stats/analytics site—Protrade, which later became Citizen Sports, formed in late 2003 and early 2004, where Desjardins was the lone hockey “expert” amongst others doing the same work for baseball, basketball and football.

Still, Desjardins, like most everyone else involved in hockey analytics, points to the arrival of Corsi by way of Ferrari as a watershed moment.

Whatever you think of advanced stats in hockey, the story of Ferrari and how Corsi came to be is a mindblower that most of the #fancystats community would not believe.