Strength in numbers

There are no musical acts performing, no food trucks or mosh pits to be found and no merchandise for sale. For those reasons alone, this particular seasonal gathering doesn’t quite pack the same punch that so many others around Manitoba do this time of year.

But make no mistake: The first-ever “summer coaching summit” that begins today is an important one to a Winnipeg Jets organization hoping to hit all the right notes when the curtain rises on a new season in the fall.

Taking centre stage will be new head coach Scott Arniel, who has put together the itinerary for Hockeypalooza 2024.

Jets head coach Scott Arniel says the organization’s first summer coaching summit will be a busy four days, with an emphasis on analytics and special teams. (Mike Deal / Free Press files)

“There’s lots on the schedule. We’ve got 19 or 20 bullet points,” he told the Free Press of the four-day event, which runs through Thursday.

The list includes integrating a pair of new assistant coaches — Dean Chynoweth and Davis Payne — into the systems and structure of a squad that went 52-24-6 last season, finishing fourth-overall in the NHL standings and leading the league in fewest goals against.

Those two men will work with Arniel, who takes over from the retired Rick Bowness, and returning assistants Marty Johnston and Wade Flaherty.

“There will be some teaching. With Dean and Davis, we’ve got to get them up to speed on how we go about our business. Marty and I have been doing lots of prep work to get that started,” said Arniel.

Scheduling, training camp plans, media relations, video usage and all-important special teams — which was a significant sore spot for the Jets last year — are other hot topics.

One of the numerous itinerary items during the summit includes integrating a pair of new assistant coaches — Dean Chynoweth (pictured) and Davis Payne — into the team’s systems. (Graham Hughes / The Canadian Press files)

“I want some of their opinions and some of their thoughts on how they did it in other organizations,” Arniel said of the newcomers. “The other side is that both of them are going to have a big part in the speciality teams. I’ve mentioned how much it is important to me and our team that those areas get better. So that will be a big emphasis, as well.”

Staff from the Manitoba Moose will also be in attendance, with the idea of ensuring both the big club and the farm team are on the same page.

One of the primary focal points during the summit will be analytics, which Arniel said at his introductory news conference in May will take on a greater role under his watch.

“There’s a gazillion different statistics out there that can make you look good, make you look bad, things that you can use, things that are overkill,” he said.

Returning assistant coach Marty Johnston, along with Wade Flaherty will be on hand to help Chynoweth and Payne get up to speed with the club. (Mike Deal / Free Press files)

“So, what we’re trying to do is funnel it to our coaching staff, so we can determine, ‘OK, what is it that we want? What do you guys want, what do you guys (in the analytics department) have?’” Arniel explained.

“We make that a little bit smaller and the stuff that gets to the players has to be even more fine-tuned, because players have a lot going on and we don’t want to overkill them in that department. But if there are things we can feed to them, that’s where we’re planning on going.”

The move is being applauded by external experts in the field, who believe the Jets have been lagging behind some of their competition when it comes to the so-called fancy stats game.

“It would certainly seem like the Jets haven’t used analytics fully to their capacity. Especially compared to teams that are all-in on analytics, like Colorado, Florida and Carolina,” said Byron Bader, the Calgary-born creator of Hockey Prospecting, a data-driven player comparison and drafting tool.

His mention of Colorado is noteworthy, since the Avalanche just faced the Jets in the first round of the playoffs last spring, dropping the first game before winning the next four. Following that series, the Denver Post ran a story on how the club used analytics as “the secret sauce” to make adjustments on the fly to overwhelm Winnipeg.

The Colorado Avalanche are credited with using analytics to make adjustments on the fly to bury the Jets in the first round of the playoffs. (Fred Greenslade / The Canadian Press files)

Avalanche defenceman Jack Johnson, an 18-year veteran, described it this way to the Post when explaining how analytics helped them beat the Jets.

“I think it’s super useful for us. (Coaches) break it down and simplify it. I think it puts it into a perspective for the players that takes away any opinion or emotion, because numbers are unemotional,” he said.

For the second consecutive post-season, Rick Bowness was unable to launch his own counter-punch, and his group was quickly ushered into the golf season.

“This is a great example of using analytics in real time to make adjustments to swing the game in your favour,” Bader said. “Although it was a small game sample, they have millions of pieces of data from every puck touch over the past five or 10 years.

“So you can glean from the data that Winnipeg played X way in Game 1 and, based on hundreds of games historically where teams maybe played similar, if we react with Y then this can be how we counteract how they beat us in Game 1.

“The Avs obviously picked up on something and never looked back.”

“This is a great example of using analytics in real time to make adjustments to swing the game in your favour… The Avs obviously picked up on something and never looked back.”– Byron Bader

Vegas did the same thing in 2023, dropping the opener to the Jets before winning four straight. Was this a case of an old-school coach like Bowness disregarding the data that was coming his way in favour of the so-called “eye test?”

Some will draw that conclusion, especially with Arniel now leaning into the subject.

“Making sure everybody’s on the same page, making sure they’re all using the same stats, and when they speak to one another, making sure they’re all talking in a common language to one another,” said Micah Blake McCurdy, a Halifax-based mathematician who has done consulting work with five NHL clubs in the past and now runs HockeyViz, another data-fuelled website.

“That’s a lot of organizational infrastructure work. If you don’t actually have all the people on the same page, you can have the smartest people you like doing tremendous work, and it goes for nothing.”

For those reasons, how coaches and players use the data is also important. Bader said some of Winnipeg’s brightest offensive stars and biggest minute-munchers — Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor up front, and Neal Pionk on the blue line — are some of the biggest culprits when it comes to the defensive side, meaning caution is often needed when it comes to their deployment.

The Jets’ analytics department is largely an anonymous, behind-the-scenes group — that’s how teams prefer it — but its role will likely take on an increased importance with Arniel now at the helm. (Ruth Bonneville / Free Press files)

“They have an all-world goalie in Connor Hellebuyck that can cover up a lot of mistakes,” said Bader. “Teams that are, perhaps, more engaged on the analytics side may use those types of players more strategically.”

McCurdy said the usage now extends well beyond things such as individual matchups within a game to areas including contract negotiations. Analytics are regularly brought up at arbitration hearings and free-agent signings. Simply relying on instinct and experience in a numbers game is a recipe for disaster.

“It’s going to have a certain amount of blind spots,” he said. “So one of the things you can do, if you have a disciplined process, is you can find the most severe errors that your instinct might lead you into, because it’s the precisely the kind of thing you’re not going to see coming, because you’re not weighing all factors or you’re using your gut.”

“The motto in nearly any industry right now, not just sports, is, ‘the more data the better.’” – Byron Bader

Winnipeg’s analytics department is largely an anonymous, behind-the-scenes group — that’s how teams prefer it — but its role will likely take on an increased importance with Arniel now at the helm.

“Analytics and data analysis aren’t going anywhere. It’s becoming more and more prominent,” Bader said. “The motto in nearly any industry right now, not just sports, is, ‘the more data the better.’

“So while they’re, perhaps, a bit later to the game in terms of what they have set up analytically and how they’re using it, you’ve gotta join the fold at some point. All the best teams that are winning currently are heavily focused on analytics.”

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Ken Wiebe
Sports reporter

Raised in the booming metropolis of Altona, Man., Ken Wiebe grew up wanting to play in the NHL, but after realizing his hands were more adept at typing than scoring, he shifted his attention to cover his favourite sport as a writer.

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