Judging NHL and Swiss League Hockey Coaching: Fooled by randomness

Fooled by randomness

or

Why we “experts”, journalists, fans, players and coaches have to stay very modest and humble with our opinions about the game of hockey.

In the – just sometimes ;-) - serious world of economy it was painful for some experts to find out that their theories from elite-universities bursted like a children balloon in the recent finance and economical crises in the US and Europe. We have so many highly intellectual and wise economical experts on this planet and nobody of them did predict these huge crises (sorry if I did forget the one or the other exception to this fact).

In sports we have even more “experts” and not all of them have a sharp intellectual mind and not all of them are highly educated but sports of course is also not as serious as economics, it’s “just” entertainment but still: I tried to figure out what we “experts” did tell and advise in hockey in recent times. To make it not too complicated I stay with the analyses with some statements about coaches:

Approx. one year ago the Swiss national-team-coach Sean Simpson got heavily criticized by the majority of the Swiss media, he was called a loser with naive game-strategies and wrong roster-decisions, culminated with the recommendation to fire him. Now, one year later, after some wins in the group-games vs top-hockey-nations he is now a genius. Arno Del Curto, head-coach of the HC Davos and Chris McSorley, head coach and GM of Geneva, are two of the most hyped coaches in the Swiss league. Del Curto even has a status of a Messiah in some Swiss pencils. Finnish Antti Törmänen, head-coach of the SC Bern – on the other end of the scale – was bashed nearly all season long again and again. Some people have the opinion that results always tell the truth, so let’s stay with the results at this point: Arno Del Curto did lose in the first playoff-round twice in a row with a top-four-roster in his hands. Chris McSorley did even go to the relegation-round last year with an average roster and did lose in the first playoff-round this year with an above-average roster. Smart and wise Antti Törmänen became champion with Bern after missing the championship last year only in game seven of the final. To be fair, he had a top-roster in both years. Media-loser Doug Shedden did lose Raphael Diaz to the Montreal Canadiens in one year and Damien Brunner to the Detroit Red Wings in the other but still managed to reach the semi-finals in each season with the EV Zug, so maybe he is the real coaching hero, a winner? So, the results of the last two years actually tell the “truth” that Arno Del Curto and Chris McSorley are bad coaches and Antti Törmänen and Doug Shedden are really good ones. To make our opinion-finding even more painful: Is Sean Simpson a scapegoat or a genius? I can ask the same question about NHL-coaches Jack Capuano, New York Islanders? Is he a genius – he is the head-coach of the now surprising New York Islanders – or is he a loser (last year’s New York Islanders were really bad)? What about Bruce Boudreau? Got fired in Washington, now successful in Anaheim? Barry Trotz? As good as last year’s Predators or as bad as this year’s? Randy Carlyle? After winning the Stanley Cup in 2007: As bad as he was badmouthed in Anaheim 2011 or as good as in Toronto who made the playoffs for the first time for quite a while? There are also tons of other examples of coaches in hockey and other sports who are just sometimes successful and sometimes not. But if I would tell in Switzerland that e.g. Arno Del Curto is a normal, average coach with some good habits and some bad ones, successful with good teams, average successful with average teams but nearly nobody would agree with me on first sight. To be fair: He let his teams play an attractive, entertaining style of hockey, this is what I really like about him. In Switzerland Del Curto is a coach you either love or hate, but in my opinion he is just ok, average with a colorful personality and especially a good self-promoter with charisma. But charisma has nothing to do with being good or bad. If we analyse history we will pretty fast find out that usually not charismatic people did turn the world to good. In most cases charismatic persons did do very dangerous and destructive things in the end. Means: Be very careful to declare a charismatic coach a good coach, you might overrate him. Don’t let the charisma fool you!

Coming back to the painful search of the truth, the truth in hockey: Of course, you smell it: If you are not a lazy thinker you know that the truth is much more complicated than just analyse naked results but still: This “rolling out the facts” is somewhat interesting and eye-blinking to some big mouth-reports and recommendations and according to the results these recommendations were just plain wrong.

Yes: It’s wrong to judge good and bad, right and wrong just from the results. Not only in economical analyses but also and even worse in sports-analyses we get fooled heavily by randomness, we get fooled too many times by the results. Instead we should try to find out the most probable results and start the analyses from then. Usually for much more than 50% it’s not this strategy or the other, not this coach or the other, not this roster-decision or the other. It’s just plain luck! It’s painful for us who have to explain the fans and the average observers why this team did win or the other. If we would be very honest, we would have to tell in most cases on the top-level: I don’t know really, in the end this team was just more lucky than the other. Watch the NHL-playoff-series round 1 this year. Tons of series go to 6 or 7 games. Tons of games go to OT… and after an OT-win or loss somebody wants to tell me why the winner did win and the loser did lose? The same goes for the Swiss league. Tons of series went to seven games and if just one coach tells me that he has control about the result in a game 7 or about the outcome in OT he is just a joke. Common! Yes, there are much more unexplainable things in life than we human beings in a self-overrating and naive arrogance admit. Yes, there are much more unexplainable results in sports, in hockey than “experts” admit. Actually life and sport-results are so exciting because deep inside we do know that we don’t know. We never know who will win on the top-level and after the games we usually have just very empty and pale explanations if we are very honest with ourselves. Very small changes in life can have dramatic changes in probabilities. Very small things in a hockey game can dramatically change the probability of a result (shot 1cm more to the left or right, a referee-call or non-call, a small brain-cramp of a usually reliable player, one genius play of a star-player, one bad decision in the neutral zone, one bad read of the goalie, one risky play of a player what results in a goal for or a goal against and you name it…). One of these small things can change the characteristic of a game dramatically and no coach on this planet can control all these small things.

Coming to an end with a positive quote: It’s one of the biggest illusions to believe that randomness is bad and risky and that we can control it. Randomness is exciting positive, we just have to accept and enjoy it. And maybe we should be much more careful with badmouthing or hyping hockey-coaches.

Thomas Roost, 11th May 2013