HABS Hire Christopher Boucher For Analytics
Written by Fred Arshoff
On Friday May 13, 2022 Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes announced the team have hired and signed Christopher Boucher to the new position of Director Of Hockey Analytics.
I do have to agree it’s excellent to analyze as much data as you can on the players and what the team is doing right and wrong. The numbers won’t tell you everything, like in the plus/minus statistics the numbers can be very badly off and I will explain why.
Christopher Boucher
Before signing, with the Habs, Boucher was a professional scout for the San Jose Sharks for two years. He previously worked for the sports analytics company Sportlogiq.
Statistics That Make No Sense To Me
The Plus/Minus Statistics That Make No Sense To Me
As most of you know when a player is on the ice for a goal his team scored at even strength a player is awarded a plus, and if on the ice for a goal against is awarded a minus. So far, logical. What happens though if a player comes out of the penalty box and before he can help his teammates defend their end of the ice, or get to the bench, the other team scores a goal. Should he be awarded a minus if he didn’t get a chance to come back and help. I hardly think so. Now let’s look at the other side of the ledger. The player is in the penalty box and they score before he gets in to the offensive zone he is still given a plus although he didn’t do anything to help the score the goal.
Time On Ice
Although many teams use this, to me it’s also not perfect. Someone’s eight minutes on ice can be much harder then someone’s 15 minutes. If you’re on the ice for penalty killing you’re using that much more energy and will need more time to catch your breath. If you have 15 minutes on the ice and you’re an elite player and going on and getting extra time going against the opponents fourth line those are much easier minutes to play, as well as time on ice during a powerplay.
Penalty Minutes
Again this isn’t a fair judgement of how disciplined a player is. What if an opponent drops their gloves and starts fighting with you, are you not supposed to drop your gloves and defend yourself. And for fighting to defend yourself you get a five minute penalty. Also some penalties are needed to take to stop a player from scoring a goal against you.
Statistics I Would Like To See
One statistic I have never seen and would be very interested in seeing is for centers. What percent of faceoffs do they win against right handed players VS left handed players.
Another statistic I would like to see is how many minutes a defenceman played on his opposite side as that is much harder and all the turns are the reverse in what they normally do. Compare the statistics and see how the numbers are when he plays his normal side as opposed to the opposite side. I’m sure they are being tallied so I would like to see the results.
Closing
In closing I would like to wish Christopher Boucher the very best of luck with his job with the Canadiens and hope the number crunching does help the team win more games and helps Martin St. Louis put the correct players on the ice for special situations.
Montreal Sports 