The Soviet breakthrough in hockey stats. Why Brian Burke has it wrong, Part 2.
No team has ever won a championship because of "Moneyball" style tactics, said Leafs GM Brian Burke during a panel discussion at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, a statement that made my head hurt.
Really? No team has used an analytical approach, with a heavy emphasis on stat analysis, to help them win it all?
How about the Dallas Mavericks in the National Basketball Association last season, a team with a strong focus on analytics? How about the Boston Red Sox, who hired Bill James? How about football teams like the New England Patriots, who use analytics like they breath air.
Maybe Burke doesn't follow other sorts, but his own sport, hockey, may have the single best example of a team using an analytical approach, with a heavy focus on statistical analysis, to win championship after championship. The Soviet Union's national team (which I wrote briefly about on Monday) was run by coach Anatoli Tarasov, as analytical a hockey coach as the world has ever seen, and arguably as successful a coach as the hockey world has ever seen.
Here's an excerpt from Lawrence Martin's excellent book, The Red Machine, on some of the analytics Tarasov used in the 1960s, as he brought Russian hockey from zero-to-world supremacy from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.
So if you ever wondered why instead of dumping it in, the Soviet teams would call off a failing attack and circle back to re-group, here's your answer. They had studied it. They had the numbers. They saw it worked better, at least with their style of game, not to give up possession, but to circle back, then attack once more.
And, as I've said, there's no denying their astonishing achievements in hockey. And if Tarasov were alive to take over the Toronto Maples Leafs today, and if he had a budget as big as Burke's budget, you can rest assured he'd be spending heavily on Moneypuck, on analyzing existing stats and on tracking all kinds of stats that aren't being tracked right now.
To put it to Burke's bottom line, the Soviets had plenty of parades, plenty of chamionships. They were among the winningest of all winners in sports in the previous century, and part of their success was based on their analytical approach, including the use of stats.
So it's OK with me if Burke doesn't see value in analytics. Other NHL teams will.
And they will be the ones holding parades in June.