Why do we overrate coach-changing effects?

If a team plays bad it’s a very common reaction to change the coach and it’s a very popular – but most probably wrong – opinion that coaching-changes lead to better results. The measure-stick are the results before the coach-changing and immediately after the coach changing. This measure-stick seems to be logical and fair but... again... it’s most probably wrong.

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I try to explain why:

Firing a coach is nearly always the end-result of not fulfilling expectations. Let’s say the expectations were realistic – in reality they are more often not realistic than the other way round – but in our example I even tell: Management, media and fans had realistic expectations about what their team is going to achieve according to potential. In every season in every sport there are phases where a team plays up to the expectations, there are phases when a team is underachieving and there are phases when a team is overachieving. A coach is always fired during an underachieving phase. So, after the coaching-change there is always a very big chance that the team plays better because an underachieving phase is usually followed by a „expectations-achieving phase“ or an overachieving phase – with the old coach or with a new coach. If it’s a new coach we just take the simple thinking and create a completely uncritical causality (we play better since we did change the coach). This is just a thinking-mistake, this simple causality is by far not proven and most probably wrong. There could be a lot of different reasons why a team is playing better, the coach-changing is just one of many possibilities. The most logical reason is as explained. An underachieving phase is followed by a phase where the teams meets the expectations or by an overachieving phase. Coming back to my examples in my last column: Bern did play bad and suddenly played better – without coach-changing. If they would have fired Törmänen and then after had the same results as Törmänen had now: Most „experts“ would be sure that this is because of the coach-changing. The same goes for Zug and for Davos. They suffered underachieving phases, didn’t change the coach and played much better after. Ambri is a different case. They had some sort of better results shortly after the coach-changing but again. Was it because of the coach-changing or was it because of the most logical reason: Once again, after an underachieving phase…and so on, don’t want to bore you.

In addition to my explanation I want to inform all readers that in North American pro-sports they did some scientific research about coach-changing effects and the results are just brutal. No effect in the longterm, a very small effect in the short-term. I highly doubt that results in Europe would be much different although I have to admit that I don’t know about such a study about European pro sports.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer of hiring the best possible coach and I recommend to do so in a very professional way with different researchs and methods. I actually recommend this to do with all staff-members you have to hire (players, coaches, medical-staff, backoffice-staff, scouts and so on) but in most cases I’m not a believer in coach-firing.

Zurich, 9 December 2012 / Thomas Roost

What did Swiss Hockey League teams learn from the NHL lockout ?

Obviously the readers might expect that I will pinpoint to the quality-differences of the great NHL-lockout-players to the „normal“ Swiss league players. Yes, this quality-difference is a fact but I did put this into one of my blogs earlier on. This time I turn the page and want to focus onto the wise fact, that so far in our Swiss league just one team did change the coach and this might be at least partly because of the NHL lockout.

In our league we have unbelievable rollercoasters in the standings, some weeks with somehow surprising leaders and underachieving teams on the other hand. Weeks later the leaders and underachieving teams are others and right now at least at the bottom of the standings everything is more or less as expected at the beginning of the season.

Dramatic changes in the standings, bad weeks and polemic media usually leads to a lot of unnecessary and expensive coaching-changes. Not so this time and this is the learning-effect of our GMs. A few examples:

The pure results of the HC Davos in the early going would definitely lead to a coach-change if you would take the Swiss soccer-league as a measure-stick. Davos has clearly a top2 team on paper but did find themselves out of the playoffs not so long ago. What happened? Keyplayers were injured (Nash, Sykora, Von Arx). What can the coach do if your key-players are injured? Nothing. Davos management did realise this and didn’t fire Del Curto.

SC Bern had some tough weeks also. Especially the media-pressure to the coach was pretty high towards firing the coach. The management wisely didn’t do so. Instead they hired John Tavares  and shortly after they play much more attractive and much more succesful... with the same coach.

SC Langnau Tigers have one of the worst teams on paper. The roster depth is weak and so the quality of the „normal“ import players is even more important than in other teams. They didn’t do a good job in the off-season in this category. Then they did lose their most important Swiss player, Simon Moser, due to injuries for most of the games, did hire just mediocre lockout-players compared to other teams. All this did lead to a crystal clear situation: The Tigers team on the ice was just plain bad. Not so long ago their coach, John Fust, got celebrated as a true magician – as in Switzerland many hockey-guys do again and again with the Davos coach Arno Del Curto – did lose game after game, sometimes in a really sad manner. Fire the coach? Not so the Tigers, right they were. Also the Tigers did probably learn that the coaches influence to success or failure is much smaller than many people think.

EV Zug

EV Zug did lose Raphael Diaz and Damien Brunner in the last two years. It was just a question of time until these substantial losses will lead to much worse results and logically it happened in the beginning of this season. Last years regular-season champion Zug did find itself in a non playoff-spot, with the same coaching-staff. Then the NHL-Lockout did spread out and finally Zug did hire Diaz, Brunner and Zetterberg...and just weeks later Zug is in the rankings already very close to the top. By the way: Still the same coaching-staff.

Servette Geneva

According to many, Geneva has a great coach in Chris McSorley. In my mind he maybe is a great coach but I don’t want to discuss this, maybe he is just an average coach and being an average coach is just enough to win a championship if you have the right players. Chris McSorley is the GM of this Geneva club at the same time and responsible for all player-moves and acquisitions. In this he is a master! A master not as a coach but as a GM. Last season too many key-players did suffer serious injuries for too long and even the „great“ coach Chris McSorley did find himself in the relegation round where he even did lose the first round – maybe he did lose this first round on purpose because so he did win additional money from ticket-sales in the secons-round (against relegation). Keyplayers injured, McSorley Coach, no success. In summer McSorley did manage to get some great new players (e.g. Romy, Almond, Walker), started the season with nobody injured and dominated the league with ease! He also did hire Yannick Weber und Logan Couture from the lockout shopping-list. Not long ago, Almond got injured and Couture did go home to North America. I guess you know what comes next: Yes, Geneva started to lose game after game and as of today, they even did lose the top of the rankings already. By the way: Same coaching-staff as early on.

Change of scenery:

The NHL is an open book. Everybody knows how much money everybody makes and I guarantee you that these figures show a lot about the value of employees in NHL-franchises. Because of the great salary-cap-system all GMs have to deal very careful with money. The result: NHL-GMs did find out looooong time ago that the most valuable assets in a team are the star-players and so they get paid so much more than average or below average players. Why is that? You always can easily replace average or below average players, in this category you take the one who is prepared to play for your team with a lower price-tag. More or less the same goes for coaches. NHL coaches are by far not as well paid as the star-players in their teams. They have good salaries and – don’t get me wrong - they deserve to have good salaries but NHL-GMs know very well that the coaches are NOT the most important employees in the hockey-business, the star-players are. For some softies and social romantic brains in European leagues this is a tough fact to swallow but it’s just true. Also in our country there is sometimes a too big team-hype and even worse: A „our star is the coach“ hype. This views are too excessive and I guess what happened in this lockout-season did open a lot of eyes in the local Swiss hockey-business. The lesson learned by our GMs is good and bad for our head-coaches. The bad: The importance of a head-coach is not as overly “hyped” important as it is judged in some media again and again and this means the GMs will also learn that they shouldn’t fall into a trap of excessive salary-demands of coaches, resp. their agents. The good: Our GMs did also learn that it is wise to keep contracts with coaches. Coaches don’t get fired anymore that fast and this is a very wise development in our league. The coaches deserve to do their job in a stable and trusted surrounding. Judge your coaching-staff after the contract is finished and not after 10 bad games. Also the other way round: Never fall into the trap to extend a coaches contract after 10 surprisingly good games.

So, our Swiss league history 2012/2013 will be written all over again very soon. The NHL will start in January and all our teams have to get judged again without their lockout-players. This will be an exciting time again... as hockey-times actually always are...

…last but not least… while I’m writing this column maybe the Langnau Tigers already did fire their coach, John Fust. In the full interest of the Tigers, of John Fust and in the interest of my esteem of the Tigers management I desperately hope that they don’t fire him. They can only be better than now if all their key-players are and stay healthy. In addition they should probably upgrade their import-player “roster”. If both will happen the Tigers will be well prepared to fight successful against relegation. If they change John Fust it will change nothing.

 Zurich, 9 December 2012 / Thomas Roost

Knowledge - a shy try...

In these days of passionate negotiations between the NHL and the NHLPA with thousands of experts who know why this season will be played or cancelled, in these days with “knowing” about the end of the world by 21 December (Maya-Calendar-prediction), in these days with millions of economical and other experts (how many of them did predict the financial crises?) who tell us what will be, it’s about time to sit back, take a deep breath, stay modest, humble and down to earth and start to realize that we – human beings – know much less about what’s going on on this planet than we believe we know. Just very few things are for sure and too many things we just think they are for sure. Building the bridge to the ongoing lockout-discussions:

Not even one person knows for sure how it will end. But still, even if you know that you don’t know things for sure you have to take decisions in life and you have to judge things. By judging things we too often make the mistake to judge what happened in the end, the result. In sport e.g. the winner was right the loser was wrong. If a sales strategy did lead into better results it was a good strategy and if not it was a bad strategy. This is easy to understand and most people follow this “wisdom”. The problem is: It’s just plain wrong. Correct thinking is: You always should judge a strategy or a prediction not with the outcome but with the most probable outcome. This is not so easy to understand I do recommend to read my last sentence once again. Take a breath, relax and read again: You always should judge a strategy or a prediction not with the outcome but with the most probable outcome. Of course this is not a pure science and of course I’m not qualified to dig much deeper into this in certain subjects but I dare to give you two examples from hockey:

1^st example: If the Toronto Maple Leafs face the Montreal Canadiens in a world of approx. equal playerquality and the Maple Leafs win the game 5-3 so it’s easy to judge the Leafs game-strategy as the good one and the Canadiens as the bad one. If you dig a bit deeper and find out that the Canadiens did lead in the shot-statistics 39-21 and in the goal-scoring-chances-category 14-6 you have to admit that the most probable outcome in this game was a Habs and not a Leafs win but we do all know that in sports we won’t have the logical result in the end all the time. Sometimes sports-results are not logical and not fair. Sometimes results in a lot of aspects in life are not logical and not fair. Building the bridge to the lockout-talks: If you put together all single arguments indicating that a soon to be deal is on the horizon and then you put all single arguments indicating that the season is lost you will easily find out that the mountain of arguments for a “deal” is much bigger than the mountain for “no deal”. So, it has nothing to do with knowledge or magics or mystic or knowing more than others, it’s just the logics that tell that the probability for a soon to be deal is much bigger than the other way round. In addition I dare to tell that I see in the public statemtens of the NHL and NHLPA a LOT of rhetoric and PR and if I try to read between the lines I really do find that the two parties are pretty close to a deal (as per 7 December 2012). All this leads to a – in my eyes – wise prediction that we will have a deal soon. Coming back to the introduction. I have to be modest, humble, down to earth and face the truth that we human beings know much less than we believe we know, I do realize very well that of course I don’t know for sure when the NHL starts, but believe me: Even the biggest and famous hockey-names don't know this for sure. It's still possible that the end-result of this negotiating-process will be a “no deal”. If there is “a no deal” in the end, I still believe that I was "correct" with my prediction… if you know what I mean. Complicated I know, not very easy to understand but still: Please think about twice before you throw these thinkings  into the garbage.

Take care, relax, enjoy Christmas time buy a lot of presents for your kids and look forward to the soon to be NHL-season! 

Vancouver Canucks Cory Schneider in Ambri. What to expect?

It will be most difficult for goalies to adapt from NA to European rink-size. The angle-play is really different and we have to be a bit patient with the performances Cory Schneider will show us. The difference for goalies is bigger than for skaters.

Besides that we can expect a lot from Cory Schneider. He is one of the shooting-stars in the NHL and is on the verge to – or did already – replace famous Roberto Luongo as the starting-goalie in Vancouver. Luongo most probably will be traded soon and if not, Schneider will start the season as the Canucks No.1 goalie anyway. He might be the most improved goalie in the last 24 months. Schneider is a modern style goalie with a good butterfly, a big body and calm, economic movements. Means you won’t watch him play spectacular, acrobatic saves because he is nearly always positionally sound and makes look his saves easy. Lately he significantly did improve reading the game, anticipating shooters choices. He also carries a good goalie-head on his shoulders, he doesn’t get rattled easily. It’s difficult to describe weaknesses in his game. He maybe still could work with his rebound-control and compared to other North American goalies he is not a really good stickhandler so he rather makes the save than the transition play what in most cases is his 1^st priority-job anyway.

2 December 2012 / Thomas Roost