B.A. Gustafsson, Josh Holden, Rafael Diaz or Anton Gustafsson?

In the NHL the lowest salary is just a little more than $ 500’000.— and the highest is around $10 Mio. I guess – if we wouldn’t have the salary-cap this difference would be even higher. Everybody knows the salary of eachother, it's a more or less open book and jealousy is not really a problem. Some players are even proud to play with the 8 Mio-man Crosby in the same team and they are not jealous! Different mentality...

Change of the scenery: Swiss pro-league. Last week the Zurich Lions hired Swedish Olympic Gold-medal coach B.A. Gustafsson and Zug resigned defenseman Rafael Diaz for estimated 600k per season. Salary-differences between 150k and 600k in our league will lead into sometimes ugly, jealous discussions. This is our mentality. A little bit more than rumours tell that Gustafsson was one of the most expensive coaches on the market. Right now there is a big discussion in Hockey-Switzerland about whether the contract-extension of the Zug defenseman Rafael Diaz for 600k is stupid or not. Nobody talks about the most probably expensive signing of B.A. Gustafsson. What is my view to all this?

Personally I really do believe that B.A. Gustafsson is a very good coach and a very intelligent person but like all coaches he has his certain methods, he has is own view of human beings and he follows his own philosophies with players on and off the ice. This means what it means with most coaches: Some players will play better under Gustafsson and some players will play worse. Some players blossom under the maybe new methodics and some players will falter. In the very end personally I do think that Gustafsson is a brilliant coach for intelligent players and players with a high level of self-responsibility but not all players are intelligent and not all players show much self-responsibility.

Second case is Rafael Diaz. Diaz is a young (26 or so) and still improving defenseman. Right now he might be the best Swiss defenseman in the Swiss league but definitely is one of the best (there are probably three, maximum four other Swiss d-men in our league who are as good as Diaz). In my eyes Diaz plays extremely smart and can play a high-tempo-game. He is also on the radar of NHL-scouts and he deserves it. He is not a spectacular player on first sight – he plays very well in a more quiet way but he does it on a really high level and he does he so smart! I do recommend to follow the development of Diaz to all NHL-organisations. If he can improve in the strength- and conditioning-department he definitely will get a chance for a try-out in the NHL. I like Diaz so much that I present him the “label” as a so called franchise-player for the Swiss-League. Is he overpaid with 600k per season (for my readers from outside Switzerland you must know that with 600k he belongs to the very best paid players in our league)? No, he is not overpaid. Maybe they could have signed him for a little less plus incentives but this maybe is a too big risk. They could have lost their franchise-player for just a handful of bucks because definitely nobody else would have signed him for less than 520 or 530 or so. In my eyes it was a wise decision from Zug to sign him as their future franchise-player. He is expensive, yes - so what? If a team like the ZSC lions complains about the price of Diaz and then the next day hires Gustafsson as their new coach? Common... Diaz is young, has energy, plays already on a top-level and it’s very likely that he will become even better. It’s always the big question whether you should pay extra for older players who did already win a lot in their career or if you should pay for actual performance and potential. I definitely would choose the second and Rafael Diaz belongs to this second category. Well done Zug! Don’t get me wrong, the best player in Zug is Canadien Josh Holden and he is now not the best paid player anymore but this is not unfair and probably doesn’t make Holden too angry because Josh Holden knows: The market tells so. Josh Holden counts as an import-player. Import-players come from all over the world and to replace players like Josh Holden you just need good scouting and good networking. Yes, it’s not so easy to replace the quality of Josh Holden. That’s why he deserves to have an above-average salary compared to other import-players and he has this but I do insist: You can replace Josh Holden, you have a fair chance if you do your homework. Can you replace Rafael Diaz? No, you can’t – he is one of the top-five Swiss defensemen in our league and we have 10 teams…so… you have to have him because you can’t replace him. He is Swiss and doesn’t hurt the import-licence-contingent. So again: My first answer to the question of whether Diaz is overpaid or not: No – he isn’t .

What about Bengt-Ake Gustafsson, one of the most famous coaches in the hockey-world? I do not know his salary but I still dare to tell that he is most probably overpaid. As a coach he has just limited influence to what happens on the ice. I definitely think that the Lions could have found e.g. a local coach for half the money with the same impact. But of course the pressure is big for a big-name coach after firing the former assistant and no-name-headcoach Colin Muller. The logical but completely wrong conclusion to this is: Not again a former assistant and not again a no-name-coach. The right conclusion would be: We will try to find the best possible coach and will find out this in structured interviews and analyses and of course this coach can be found everywhere (from local assistant-coaches to exotic headcoaches in Siberia). The hiring of Bengt-Ake Gustafsson does in my eyes not have the same long-term-value-ratio than the on first sight expensive contract-extension of Rafael Diaz.

But also this view is just the view of a GM who watches the world from the local Zurich-mountain, Uetliberg. The real good GM looks at it as an eagle from the Mount-Everest – ornithologists will forgive me this example because they will probably prove me that eagles can’t survive in the heights of Mount Everest…but in this, my example, they simply can J. The eagle-eye just watches from wuthering heights and finds the bloodlines of B.A. Gustafsson, so I come to the conclusion that:

Just average-influence coach B.A. Gustafsson  (my opinion) will maybe still be the diamond in the rough for the ZSC Lions because he has a son, Anton. Anton Gustafsson has a Swiss licence because he played as a junior first for Feldkirch in Austria and for some reason this Feldkirch-licence is equal to a Swiss licence…hmmm… I don’t want to go deeper into this but it’s just a fact. Anton Gustafsson is an excellent young hockey-player, a former first-round-pick of the Washington Capitals. He suffered various injuries in the last couple of years and is not on the level yet where he would be without injuries. Means, he didn’t get an NHL-contract , was demoted even to the ECHL a couple of weeks ago and returned home to Sweden highly frustrated, even considering quitting hockey. Fortunately there is a gold-mine in the Swiss league for him. He is not an import-player like Josh Holden and he is not as good as Josh Holden yet but still he has strategically the higher market-value than Josh Holden because you can’t replace him. He has the potential to be as good as the best imports in our league without being an import and this means a potential salary of close to 1 Mio! Of course he won’t get this salary right away – he first has to show what he can do. Although I do know for sure that not the ZSC-Lions had the first idea to hire Anton as a Swiss player – the ZSC Lions are definitely in the pole-position to do so, thank’s to his father Bengt-Ake Gustafsson. I guess you know what I mean: Not the actual performance dictates the value of a player in our Swiss league, if this would be the case Josh Holden would be the best paid player. It’s the market. And the market tells that we just have a handful of good “import-players” who are no “import-players” and the market tells that we just have a handful a really good defensemen with a Swiss passport in our league and the market tells that if you do a good job in preparing the hiring of import-players you have a decent chance to replace Josh Holden but you can’t replace a healthy Dan Fritsche, Christian Dube, Ryan Gardner and a healthy Anton Gustafsson. Personally I did like Anton Gustafsson as a junior-player so much that I was 100% sure that he never ever will play in our league. He is an excellent two-way-forward, responsible, gritty and on a good overall skill-level. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for our league his various injuries did guide his career into an unexpected direction.

So, in the very end…if the Lions will land a healthy and motivated Anton Gustafsson…the hiring of his father as the head-coach was a good and wise move! The eagle-eye tells me this...

Thomas Roost / 25th October 2010

Assessing talent in a child / Part 2

I did get a very nice amount of e-mails with insightful comments and also some questions to my blog “Assessing talent in a child”. I really want to tell thank you for that, I love to learn and I did learn from your comments! In addition I would like to answer some of the questions you did ask me. Here we go…

When should you start to scout players?

There exist different opinions about this. I know some colleagues who are not much interested in younger players, they just concentrate on the draftees. Personally I'm interested in younger player because of the described most important „ability to learn”, I want to check this. Actually I start with 14 years old but a couple of months ago e.g. I did watch even a 13 years old who is already an unbelievable explosive, fast and technically sound skater, so I don't tell he is just 13, I don’t tell I'm not interested in. A couple of weeks ago I even followed a 11 years old kid who did impress me a lot and again: I don’t tell that I’m not interested in this kid. Of course I will follow him, his progress and everything. On the one hand I do know for sure that projecting 11, 12 or 13 years old is extremely tricky. On the other hand I don't tell that I'm not interested in them, if somebody stands out in this age I'm of course interested in and if this someone has some special abilities I definitely write down some comments and check later about improvement. One person asked about scouting already a 7 years old. I don't know about 7 years old but if he stands out in the vision-category I would like to find out why. Maybe he did watch much more hockey-games than others in his age, maybe he has a dad who did teach him some sort of vision at a very early age. Maybe he played already tons of pond-hockey or something similiar. I definitely would be interested in this kid but mostly there are quite unspectacular answers about why he is so good in this aspect in such an early age. I definitely wouldn't project him yet but I definitely would love to watch him playing already. I love to watch exceptional things in hockey. Young phenoms, fastest players, most strong, most whatever. But for most of these discovered „most of whatever“ there are usually pretty simple reasons. And the reason No.1 is: This kid did play more hockey than others, did skate more, did have the better teachers or in the best case scenario: A combination of both. It’s usually not so much about just talent. Even Mozart was not really as much of a boy-wonder as we would like to think, he had a musician as father (Leopold Mozart) who was keen on doing drills with his son, Wolfgang. So Wolfgang became very good at a very young age because of more and better practice than others. Also the Beatles became just world-famous after practising thousands of hours together in Hamburg, also the Beatles were not just so called “naturals”. They did work extremely hard, and so did the Chess-Champions, so did Bill Gates, so did Roger Federer and all other world-class-performers. They all did work more than others because they did love what they did do, they all are very passionate people.

Somebody else did ask about what I think in terms of letting kids just shoot the puck, going coast to coast, always challenging the 1:1 and so on. I strongly support the approach of just letting the kids develop their fun, their passion with the game. Kids who can go coast to coast and shoot the puck - let them do this. Kids who love to pass the puck. Let them do this; don't punish them by telling "not allowed to go 1:1" or "not allowed to shoot", or "not allowed to pass". They will develop what they like most and then they come naturally to a point where they will find out that their domination doesn't work anymore. They will find out that if they want to go on with dominating the game they also have to learn to use their teammates with clever playmaking and passing. The vision-guy will find that if he wants to reach the next level he also has to learn how to score, how to shoot the puck, they will find out that it is most exciting if the opponents never will find out what I will do next, passing, going 1:1 or shooting. But don't punish them too early with not allowing doing this or that. Let them develop and cultivate their speciality and if the kid is really passionate about the game, curious about hockey in general, it will ask about players, about strategies, about different skills and assets of great hockey-players, curious, passionate kids want to know everything early enough and will adapt what is needed to become a more or less well-rounded hockey-player. Lazy kids, who want to stay in their comfort-zone, will just go on with only shooting, only skating or just passing. Try to observe this and if you find curiousity, passion to learn additional things, maybe even obsession, it tells a lot about overall talent - if the basic-mechanics and maybe the one or the other speciality are there in combination with the curiosity, the obsession to improve, the love for the game…then watch out!

I do also agree with somebody who told me that in his eyes you need to have a certain amount of basic talent. Yes, this is true, you need to have certain mechanics in your movements, a certain level of body-coordination, of hand-eye-coordination. You need to have certain basic physical tools if you want to become a world-class hockey-player (e.g. you never will be a deadly scorer if you have weak wrists) and I also guess it really helps if you have at least an average intelligence. If you don't have this it will be extremely difficult. But again...you also can improve your body-coordination, you also can learn this. A well respected Russian figure-skating-teacher did tell me once, - when my son was very small – “send him to gymnastic-lessons and you will see how much of a better skater he will be after all (he will improve body-balance and coordination)” I guess she was right. Of course you can't do everything, you have to set priorities, but again, work more - maybe even gymnastics - and you will be a better player. When I was very young my father wanted me to play the violin, I was pretty good at this, did win even a national-junior-championship but unfortunately I didn't like it too much - would have preferred to play hockey. So I did reach just a certain level (junior-championship) but didn’t improve later much because of lack of passion. When I was bigger I played more hockey and wondered why I had astonishing good, soft and quick hands and hand-eye-coordination and I guess part of the truth was my extremely developed hand-eye-coordination from playing the violin for years, I also did easily learn to shoot the puck pretty well with my backhand and this also had to do with certain mechanics, developed in my left arm/hand from playing the violin. I played some sort of hockey in the basement of our house with sticks with crushed hockey-blades from players who did throw away the damaged stick. Nobody did get me a real hockey-stick…poor boy I was…smile.... I stickhandled hours in narrow tight spaces around chairs, gardening-machines, potatoes and wine-bottles with a “handicapped” stick. It was big fun and you know what? With all this I developed excellent stickhandling-abilities and everybody did think that I’m just talented – but actually I did just practise hundreds of hours in our basement. Don't get me wrong: Don't make your son playing the violin if he wants to become a hockey-player and I also don’t think it’s necessary to present your son a crushed hockey-stick... but I guess you know what I mean.

Thomas Roost

What is a good coach?

There are different perspectives in terms of judging a good coach in hockey and in sports in general.

The first perspective is a business one. Everybody is his own entrepreneur. So, as a coach you have the target to get the best job for the best possible money. Means the best coach is the one who manages to get hired by the most famous franchises for the biggest salaries. It doesn’t really matter too much what you did do as a coach in detail, in the very end it just does matter that the most famous franchises are going to  choose you. Maybe you are just an excellent salesman, a very good entertainer, a good looking man with a very self-confident approach and charisma what make other people believe: This is the man! That’s it. Finish. We close the book and declare Jose Mourinho (Real Madrid) and Louis Van Gaal (Bayern Munich) the best coaches in football (soccer) and Ron Wilson (Maple Leafs) plus John Tortorella (Rangers) as some of the best coaches in hockey. For some reason they did make the owners of these franchises to hire them. Actually this is a clear, straight forward and honest perspective. Hired by the best franchises for very good money!

Of course – you most probably already guess it… - this is also a simple, a very simple, a too simple perspective but a perspective you very often can find in the sports-media, especially in the ones with the very big letters and the very short main-clauses.

If you are a person who likes simple solutions, clear truths and clear untruthfulnesses you can stop here to read, you’ve got it already!

Personally I really dare to make it more complicated. I’m very seldom happy with simple ideologies although I admire the philosophical approach: “Beauty is simple and straight forward…” but just not in judging coaches.

I dare to tell

that if I – a simple football/soccer fan with close to non soccer-coaching-education – would be the coach of Real Madrid in the Spanish League – I would finish in the league-standings not worse than 4^th place…  and if I would be hired as the CEO of a world-famous bank I’m not so sure whether my year-end-result would be much worse than it is with the CEOs who are now in charge. I also want to refer to Adam Smith’s book “An Inquiry into Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”  - by the way this is maybe one of the most important books in the history of economic thought – according to Smith, the managers charged with supervising the daily operation of a firm are nothing more than “principal clerks”. He definitely didn’t overrate the impact of managers on the success or failure of an organization. And in my opinion the same goes for head-coaches in sport-teams. In this on first sight very bold statement you can find between the lines what I want to tell you undermentioned.

I want to tell you that I’m pretty sure that there is a big amount of coaches in all sports who would be as good as the Mourinhos, Van Gaals, Wilsons and Tortorellas in terms of actual performance as a coach, of course not in terms of selling- and networking-skills. E.g. Ottmar Hitzfeld – coach of the Swiss football national-team  – one of the most famous soccer-coaches worldwide is very well comparable with his predecessor, Köbi Kuhn. Nobody on this planet (except the Swiss) knows Köbi Kuhn, and his charisma is light-years below the one of Ottmar Hitzfeld. Köbi Kuhn did never ever had any success as a professional team-coach – he had somehow decent results with the Swiss junior-nationalteam, that’s it. These two coaches coached more or less the same team, the Swiss national-team and both had more or less the same results. If I would dig a bit deeper about the results I would even find that Köbi Kuhn was slightly better… And this with the same team, the same players what makes it a very fair comparison. My inner feeling did tell me similar things since many years also in hockey but I actually never did go so far trying to proof it. Lately I did start to go into this much deeper and not surprisingly I did find the following results of sport-studies in the book “stumbling on wins”.  I admire North American Sports-Culture. It is really advanced in terms of scientific studies about all possible aspects in pro-sports and this makes the discussions so much more factual. They did do some detailed studies about factual success of NBA-coaches. Not surprisingly they did find out that the most successful coaches in terms on winning championships are the ones of teams with the best players.

Other examples:

African National football-teams did enter the World-Cups many years ago with local coaches. Everybody admired their enthusiastic style but chuckled and the common truth was that they need just European coaches to make them play a more realistic style and then they will make the next steps towards Championships. Since this time I did watch all sort of coaches from all over the world in these African countries. Experienced coaches, intellectual coaches, ridiculous coaches, young, dynamic coaches…and you know what? They all had more or less the same results. African football-teams are still good enough to advance to a certain point in the World-Cup but not much further. There are no significant factual differences with whatever system, whatever coach, whatever something they try to improve. It’s still Brasil, Italy, Argentine, Germany, lately Spain and more or less Holland who dominate world-football and this again with completely different coaches. It actually doesn’t matter much. Italy became world-champion with Marcello Lippi four years ago and with exactly the same coach they completely failed in 2010. So… success or failure is not so much the influence of a coach, it’s more the players…and if not the players…some other, still uncovered influences… as this example with Marcello Lippi shows.

Is the influence of a coach overrated?

I don’t want to find an answer to this question I want to find an answer to the question “what is a good coach”? In my opinion a good coach is when players play better than they play with other coaches. This means if a coach can make the players playing better over a long period and in different teams than other coaches could do, this tells me that he is a good coach. But this can happen in a 3^rd-level pro-league as well as in the Stanley-Cup-Final. In the NBA they did find out that just one single coach did manage to reach this target. They did follow and measure everything about the ones of Pat Riley, Lenny Wilkins, Georg Carl all the other big names and they did find out that just Phil Jackson had a record of long term and returning better stats of players when they played for him. Just one single coach who had measurable better results than the others in the long term! This study of coaches stands in contrast with the conventional wisdom. Coaches are often credited with the wins and losses of their respective teams. Those coaches with better records are believed to be better coaches. For most coaches, though, one can’t find any statistically significant impact on player performance. This suggests that for most coaches, their win-loss record is ultimately about their players. Give the coach productive players, and he will coach a winner. Give the coach unproductive players, though, and suddenly the coach is a loser. Does this mean the head coach doesn’t matter? No, this is not what the research is saying. But it’s telling that most coaches produce similar results if they work with the same players but most coaches is not every coach and it also tells that most coaches are good coaches because the study didn’t compare the head-coach-results with an arm-chair-coach.

Conclusion:

As I did tell in a blog before: You have to have the target to find the best possible coach. This is nothing but a professional approach and I would take this very serious. At the same time I do really believe that it is in the sport-business the biggest hiring-challenge to find a so called no-name-coach who is at least as good as the supposed superstar-coaches. And I am a strong believer that this is a very realistic target. I admire Pittsburgh Penguins GM Ray Shero’s brave decision to promote no-name-coach Dan Bylsma as head-coach of the NHL-team. In my eyes it’s very likely that you will find very good coaches if you scout just in your local area, watching Minor-Pro or even amateur- or junior-games in whatever sports compared to the Major-Leagues. The problem is, just a handful GMs believe that some of these coaches would be as successful as the Mourinhos, Wilsons’ and Tortorellas. 

And to come to an end and 

answer the question in the headline: 

A good coach makes his players better than they were before with other coaches. Good coaches increase productivity of players.

Last but not least: 

Please don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t hire myself as a head-coach of Real Madrid or as the CEO of a world-famous bank, I’m not qualified enough for these jobs, but still… I do stand to my according statements…

Thomas