Playoff-Madness

Playoff is the most beautiful time of the hockey-year because it seems that nobody keeps calm and composed anymore. All actors (players, coaches, staff, fans and media-guys) seem to be on “cocaine”, acting like volcanoes, forget about respectful behaviour and – of course – know all the time why this team did lose and that team did win. Heroes and scapegoats everywhere (players, coaches, refs, judges, federation-staff and you name it).

Remembering the quarterfinals in the Swiss playoffs I noticed that in game 1 Geneva was noticeably better than Zug but did lose in the end. Lausanne completely dominated Davos in the early going but in both series the clearly weaker team in the very beginning did win the series with a sweep.  Bern was slightly better than Biel, Zurich did lose to Lugano although they played a bit better than Lugano. A lot of rah, rah, rah in terms of referees, judges and with Philippe Furrer even a player who raised his voice and complained about weird decisions on and off the ice. Entertainment-level 10 out of 10. Level of composed analysing with a cool head and a warm heart: 1 out of 10.

Here a small recap of what I did read and listen:

Zug, the team what was called too soft with a weak and too friendly, emotionless, conservative coach did hire some big, physical players and did win the quarterfinal vs Geneva and this although some people did think this series will be a bye… for… Geneva. So, this weak coach with a “bye-team” did just manage a sweep vs Geneva. The coach now gets some praise because of his composed style, calm and relaxed behaviour and he emotions always under control… ;-) The no-emotion coach was the hero because he stayed calm, composed and relaxed also in the hottest game-situations.

Zurich, the team what was called too soft, did also hire some bigger and physical players, very similar to Zug and completely failed in the playoffs. They also have a composed and no-emotions-head-coach but in this case he got criticized for not shouting, not showing emotions, for not kicking the a.. of his players and you name it. The no-emotion coach was a scapegoat because he didn’t shout enough.

Majority opinion was that Geneve is a typical playoff-team with a typical playoff-coach: Strong, physical, sneaky and a coach who knows all the clean and not so clean tricks to win games and series. A coach who always inspires his players with his highly emotional behaviour on the bench. But now… after losing… he is now also a scapegoat. “He did lose control and this did also influence the behaviour of the players”. “His choleric way of coaching did destroy the cool heads of the players” and “this hot temper is contra-productive in the relation with the refs…”

Lugano was always heavily criticized because of just recruiting high-maintenance star-players without warrior-mentality and routinely firing coaches but now they got praised exactly for this… “they did bravely block much more shots than Zurich”, “Greg Ireland did outcoach Hans Wallson”. By the way it’s always the weaker team who blocks more shots. If you always have the puck you can’t block shots, you don’t need to block shots…

In Davos there is now euphoria everywhere and this so much that even bad players get praised with the support of some sort of weird stats. It seems that if you win, everything, really everything is just fine and if you lose everything is bad and this atmosphere is sometimes even pushed from people I usually respect as really bright brains.  In the playoff-emotions even the smartest guys seem to lose the cool head… but – of course – nothing better than this in terms of media-entertainment.

The coaching-god in Lausanne (please don’t get me wrong, I really like him!) with the best power-play all of a sudden has to explain why they did allow a sweep and the winners of course know exactly why they did win: They did work harder, they wanted the victory more, they showed more character and tons of word bubbles like this… and in all comments we will always find the most fashionable word-creation “Leistungskultur” – I can’t really translate in English, I guess some sort of performance-culture or so... Means a team, a coach has to bring a Leistungskultur into a franchise. Well… 100 out of 100 coaches will declare and honestly believe that they do exactly this… of course with different explanations what they mean with a “Leistungskultur”… The loser – of course – didn’t have a “Leistungskultur” but the winner of course had…  life seems to be sometimes sooooo easy… ;-)

Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva were lacking leaders (hmmm… Zurich has probably one of the best leaders you can imagine, Mathias Seger) but – of course – he couldn’t play his role anymore now because he carried too many problems with himself… and in Bern, Lugano and Davos we immediately declare grey-mice-players to successful quiet leaders – of course just “experts” notice their leadership-qualities… ;-) mostly players we have difficulties to describe because they usually hide a bit their performance or are simply… yes, you’re right… not so good players ;-)

So, of course, all wins and all defeats have certain logic, everybody seems always exactly to know why this teams did win and that team did lose. Just strange enough that these “logics” always get presented after the games and never before… In a way it’s very funny: Some of the players, coaches, sporting-directors and also some of the media-people and of course tons of fans want to make us believe that a completely unclear world is very clear, year after year. That’s why not successful playoff-teams will change their coach from a soft, so called “player-developer” to a “my way or high-way shouting hardliner” or the other way round. I would bet some money that the Lions next coach will be in the mold of a Kevin Schläpfer type of coach, after this a NHL-coach again, followed by a soft spoken Scandinavian guy…  In Geneva it’s now time for a soft spoken gentleman and in Zug they know now that it was the right decision to fire Harold Kreis after two disappointing seasons and replace him with an outgoing, wild performing bench-coach… Oh sorry, I might have mixed up something, I guess Zug didn’t change their coach after two disappointing series… but please quickly forget about this, this doesn’t fit into our simple world of “hockey-wisdoms”… ;-)

So I did bash now a little bit with a winking-eye comments of players, coaches, sporting-directors, fans and media-guys. This would be unfair if I don’t give my readers the chance to bash me. That’s why I present you my opinion about all these quarterfinal-results but if you look for simple explanations then please stop to read here – there won’t be any.

My opinion (my opinion is based on 45 years experience as a hockey-observer, 20 years experience as a hockey-scout, reading a lot about hockey and discussing hockey with people I learn a lot from):

Bern did deserve the win vs Biel, they were slightly better but the 4-1 series-outcome is a too clear result. Following the games a 4-2 or 4-3 series win for Bern would have been the more logical outcome. Some unlucky plays and one unlucky call influenced the results in favour of the favourite. Bern played solid but to be honest I’m not really excited yet with Bern at this point. I have the feeling that Bern was in the regular-season and now also in the quarterfinal a bit overrated. But of course they still remain one of the contenders, they have solid goaltending and a solid defense plus probably the best import-player-package in the league. Bern did win the series because of 50% having the better team and 50% puck-luck.

In the series ZSC vs Lugano Zurich had the slight edge, they were a bit better than Lugano and should have won this series. Compared to last year Zurich suffered a significant loss of skills. Ok, you can’t blame anybody not being able to replace Auston Matthews, but the too easy goodbye of Cunti was a unnecessary risk but – if the key-players stay healthy – they still had a good skilled team. But then happened what exactly was not allowed to happen. Robert Nilsson got injured… so Zurich was without Matthews,  Cunti and Nilsson – they did lose tons of skills. Yes, the trivial rhetoric started now to drop in: “Other players have to step up”  “in the playoffs you don’t need fancy players like Cunti or Nilsson, we need warriors and we have them with Baltisberger, Schaeppi, Marti, Kenins, Sjögren, Geering and the experienced Seger and many more”. In addition Zurich made the huge mistake not to hire a 5^th import-player, this I really believe was a big and not easily explainable mistake. So Zurich did make mistakes but was still slightly better but missing puck-luck did end their season too early. Lugano didn’t impress me too much except Merzlikins. He played a pretty poor regular-season but was besides Zug’s McIntyre the star-player of the quarterfinals.

In the Zug-Series in the first game Geneva would have deserved the win but Geneva faltered completely after that. Zug was very unlucky in the series vs Lugano last year early on and now exactly the opposite… and if Saul Miller makes them mistakenly ;-) believe that this first game was not luck but because of their mental strength – they will ride now on a very positive momentum-wave. I really like McIntyre and I just love Martschini plus it was clear that the return of Diaz will push them further ahead, he was probably the most important transfer in the league this season. Zug has a very good team and good coaches.

I was surprised that Davos swept Lausanne, I expected a tighter series. That Davos will win in the end has certain logic, they simply have the better players than Lausanne. Davos has the best Swiss players in the roster of all teams besides the ZSC Lions if Nilsson is not injured plus they have the at least average goaltending you need to be successful. They play a simple, attractive, clear style of hockey what brings them on a very high wave in positive momentums but makes them vulnerable in negative momentums because they usually can’t adapt their style. Right now they are riding on a positive wave and this makes them very dangerous. But there is also critic: Besides Lindgren they just have an average import-player-package at best. What about Lausanne? There were so many explainable reasons why Lausanne was that good. Ok, maybe they just looked explainable on first sight because in the playoffs most of these reasons seemed to be just disappeared. This is hockey, this is the not so clear world! But yes, don’t overrate playoff-analyses. A smart analyses covers the whole season, so don’t worry about Lausanne.

What will come in the semis nobody knows. The puck-luck-factor is too big to ignore, in games between these four teams who play on a similar level he even becomes again more important. So I come to my very “brave” prediction: The luckiest team of the trio Zug, Bern and Davos will be champion. Lugano is slightly behind in my eyes and needs even more luck to win.

To explain my “wisdom” in small words: Players, coaches and sporting-directors are not being paid and judged according to their performance. They are getting judged because of their success. And success in life is performance plus luck. In a hockeyleague I would guess it’s 30% performance and 70% luck, at least for teams with similar budgets. I know that 95% of the readers don’t agree with it, they still might think that the world is clear and we can control it… but it’s not…

One final sentence to the referees and judges: They often have to take decisions in unclear situations where it’s actually impossible to decide… but they have to… plus: Forget about the claim of justice, justice is a word bubble that no one can really match. So please be nice to our refs and judges, appreciate and respect their job.

So, time to bash me, my helmet is on J

Thomas                                                                    

Horgen, 19^th March 2017                                                                       RuleTheRoostPayoff190317

Decision-taking for Hockey- and other GMs

The main challenge of all GMs, in business and sports, is to find a smart way to take decisions.

We all decide a lot of times in just one day and sometimes it takes up to one minute until we decide about strawberry-marmalade or honey, for some people it takes 15 minutes to decide about a black or white shirt… or shall I take a sweater?… additional five minutes... and what about shoes? ;-) Sometimes it takes days to decide about a consultant-contract or not, weeks to decide about Volvo or BMW or where to go on holiday, what internal process is most suitable to monitor company-expenses and many more, you name it… All this takes a lot of time and energy and now I have a real great message for you: 99% of all our decisions are more or less irrelevant. Strawberry or honey doesn’t make your day successful or happy. Looking at the car decision with a very rational mind we have to agree that there is no significant technical difference between most cars so it absolutely doesn’t care whether you chose a Volvo or a BMW, don’t try to rationalise your according decision because you can’t.

Your company won’t be successful or not successful because of a smart or a not so smart expenses process and I guarantee you that’s it’s not really the place you chose for holiday what makes holiday really nice or not so nice, it’s much more the mood of the people you spend it with. What about dress? Steve Jobs did always wear the same looking sweater, Obama did always wear a dark suit and a white shirt. Why is that? Probably because they were smart enough to unload their brains and their “energy-memory-stick” from unnecessary things because they wanted to have a clear and fresh brain for the real important decisions in life; turning smaller decisions into routines seems to be wise. Take the complex, the important decisions after sleeping on it, next morning when your brain is still fresh. Don’t make important decisions based on temporary emotions and stick to your morals. Don’t take too long time for decisions, your decision-quality doesn’t get better with time. To beat confirmation bias I recommend seeking outside opinions with different perspectives. What we further should consider is: What does this decision means for an immediate effect and – what we tend to forget about – does have this decision a side-effect and a long-term-effect because for every decision we pay a price. Every decision means we become guilty and so decision-takers should first learn not to be afraid to take decisions, not to be afraid to become guilty. In addition we also have to realise that GMs have to take a lot of decisions in not decidable situations, means the info you have on the table doesn’t give a clear picture whether you should decide left or right. Nowadays with all the web possibilities we have tons of information on the table but this doesn’t really help to take decisions, actually the opposite is the case. From all these information we have to weigh in all pros and cons without bias, then think about what is the probability of the outcome – and I mean not just the short-term outcome but also longterm, including side-effects and collateral damage and last but not least we have to weigh in the context. Hopefully it will be a different decision about a security system if you run a Hamburger-Takeaway or a nuclear power station. Last but not least a Mark Twain quote: “Good decisions come from experience, but experience comes from making bad decisions.”

Coming back to an earlier point: Most decisions in our life are not important ones and this means we can save tons of time. But building the bridge for hockey now:

In old days it was quite easy, the goal-scorers and sometimes the goalies were the heroes in hockey and even when defenseman Bobby Orr entered the scene he was admired more for his skating and scoring than for his defense.  In Switzerland hockeyfans were proud to also count the assists in the stats and not only the goals scored as in football. Approx. 20 years ago even in Switzerland we started to talk about some sort of +/- stat and if you did so, you definitely belonged to the “real” hockey-experts…  A couple of years ago the advanced stats started to influence North American hockey-talk and nowadays advanced stats are part of every NHL-back-office. 

With John Chayka we even have a 20something years old GM in the NHL who is basically an advanced stats-nerd and he cultivates his status as somebody who makes us believe that he has more and better hockey-datas than others and therefore knows better about players and the probable players future. Not surprising that other teams also started to hire stat-guys and… once more… this wave finally also arrived in Switzerland and it’s definitely more than a trend: It’s a real, a significant improvement in the player evaluation era. So right now if you want to get respect and admiration from hockeyfans just start to talk about advanced stats and there is a good chance that they will respect you as a hockey-professor ;-)

But now I try to look further down the road, try to guess what lies in the future. I’m pretty sure that the stat-nerds won’t be the hockey-heroes of tomorrow because specific software will deliver us very soon everything we need to know about hockey and a hockey-player. Such products already exist and companies are now in the fine-tuning-phase of developing. Very soon every pro hockey-team on this planet will work with a system that produces all the relevant advanced stats with the help of microchips in jerseys, fixed installed cameras in all arenas and probably also other possibilities. Some hockey-nerds will sooner or later “proof” what kind of advanced stats are more relevant than others, what are the really important stats. We all will know this very soon. We need this data to support the GMs and the coaches in taking decisions and now we start to come closer to what I want to tell you: The future of success lies in smart and efficient decision-taking and this not only in hockey but also in business. Advanced stats support this but first of all we have to be careful and smart with data because even the highly developed stock-exchange algorithms and specific software don’t predict the future of shares really reliable… if at all… - and in the tendency the same will probably be with hockey-analytics-dat. Means the use of data itself will be important – what you read into it - and not so much the data itself.

As a Head HR I do know something about judging, evaluating human beings. I know something about assessments, about psychological and other tests and I do know that the result of predicting the future performance of people doesn’t get better the more data you have and/or the more tests you use, even the opposite is true, at least some studies show this. The only more or less reliable diagnostic-instrument is the trial-period… and nearly nobody really uses it as a serious and tough diagnostic-instrument... So I predict that not the advanced-stat-nerds will be the future heroes on the hot GMs-seats, the future-hero-status will belong to smart decision-takers what brings us now to the question: What is the fair value of a hockey-player? How important is a goal-scorer? What about a constant good CorsiF-player who appears just seldom on the score-sheet? Shall I spend more money for a good defensive d-man or for a good offensive d-man? What’s the value of a so called “character-player”? Actually I notice more often than not that mentioning a good character or off-ice-value means limited skills and skating but I don’t dare to tell bad things about him… ;-).  How much shall I spend for a good goalie? What about a soft player who can’t shoot the puck but produces 1.5 assists per 60m 5on5? Shall I spend more money for a backup-goalie or for a bottom 6 role-player? What about the value of a player who had great advanced stats in one team but pretty bad ones in another? Much more questions than answers.  Even a sharp brain like John Chayka (GM of the Arizona Coyotes) will find himself more often than not in actually “undecidable” situations but he has to decide and also he will remember that every decision has a price-tag. As a player – and as an employee in a company – we always also have to remember that another GM or another boss will judge our value differently. As a boss, as a GM, as a leader we have to know, that leading is always leading in dilemma. Also John Chayka will find out that he won’t be judged by performance but by success and success is performance plus luck. A successful GM or CEO is more often than not just a smart decisions-taker and he is not afraid to decide even if he is pretty unsure and even if he knows that his arguments are not yet on thick ice.

 

So, coming back to the question about the value of hockey-players: I don’t have the answers to find more or less true values for hockey-players, also I don’t know the truth but of course I don’t want to let you go without an opinion: Nowadays it’s trendy to hype reliable defensive d-men, it’s trendy for “hockey-experts” to explain how good this player is without the puck and how a player does all the small little things right what an average fan doesn’t see and so on… and yes, to a certain extent I agree with this. On the other hand I still see that the best paid players – not only in the NHL – are scoring forwards (from the top10 in NHL-salaries 8 are scoring forwards, 1 is an offensive d-man and 1 is a goalie). But if character, doing all the little things well and showing warrior-qualities are so important why doesn’t this show on the pay-slip? Hmmm… are the NHL-decision-takers dumb? While I agree that building a successful hockey-team is a very complex matter and even advanced stats still don’t give satisfying answers to a lot of questions: I personally now like to stick up for the opinion that high-octane scoring-forwards or high-end offensive-d-men really should have more value than simple fighting-machines with just decent skills. Why is that? In my opinion to score goals in hockey is the most difficult act. Creating a goal-scoring-chance, putting the puck in the net – this is what special players separates them from ordinary players. So, after evaluating so many stats, views, opinions I come back to the point where I believe that the goal-scoring-players, the offense creating players really are the top-shots in our game.

Yes, I agree that players like McDavid, Kane and Laine make more money than Bergeron, Couturier or Komarov. I will stick to this shy opinion until somebody presents me strong indications that my opinion has to be reviewed. But for now: The puck stops here.

Horgen, 11^th March 2017 / Thomas Roost                                                                                 DecisionTakingFor(Hockey)GMs