While in Europe it's often believed that the "NA-stats-science" is overrated I'm a true believer in stats. Stats tell something about players if you follow it in the long-term and if follow the right stats.
The problem in Europe is sometimes that we take the wrong stats for judging players and we take stats from just not a big enough amount of figures. E.g. we judge goalies save-percentage after just a handful of games in a tournament or so.
I guess it's time to look at a very important stat from the NHL. We have in average more than 30 games so I do dare to read something into it, in a stat I just can dream of from European leagues. It's the stat what shows how many minutes of ice-time a player needs in average to score a point. It takes away the aspect of logging a lot or nearly no ice-time. To be fair, it still doesn't take away the type of ice-time a player gets (e.g. power-play) but still... it's fair and valuable to read something into this stat. Here we go:
1. Sidney CROSBY, PIT, he needs in average just 13.4 minutes of ice time to score a point on the score-sheet.
2. Steven STAMKOS, TB, 14.7
3. Daniel SEDIN, VAN, 14.9
4. Milan HEJDUK, COL, 15.7
5. Chris STEWART, COL, 15.8
6. Teemu SELANNE, ANA, 16.1
7. Pavel DATSYUK, DET, 16.7
8. Matt DUCHENE, COL, 17.0
9. Alexander SEMIN, WSH, 17.8
10. Martin ST.LOUIS, TB, 18.1
What do I read into this:
Watch at Teemu Selanne, No. 6 and Milan Hejduk, No. 4. Players who are over the hill in their careers and still in the top10 right now? Congratulations is just not enough to be said. It's also obvious that you find whatever stat it might be, it's always Sidney Crosby at the near top or at the very top. It's time for us also in Europe to declare Sidney Crosby as simply the best hockey-player. He is the best player in my eyes since quite a long time.
I'm sure that by the end of the season this list looks a bit different but still: Matt Duchene... No.8... and Steven Stamkos... No. 2... new star-players on the horizon, actually not on the horizon, they are already right there.
Thomas Roost
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
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
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 Sweden
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
Thursday, October 7, 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
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.
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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
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 4th 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 3rd-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
Sunday, September 19, 2010
How to build a hockey-team?
This is a very often discussed question and I read a lot about team-chemistry, about players who can play within a certain system and fit to other players, fit to a coach, fit to certain philosophies. Fair enough, I guess all these aspects are true a little bit but... just a little bit.
Basically I have a very simple answer to this question. You have to find the very best player to all different positions in hockey. If you have all the best players you most probably will win. I’m a very strong believer in this very simple strategy. Actually this strategy is very simple just on first sight, but more on this later. Of course I do know all these Cynderella-Stories like „Miracle on Ice“, smaller teams win Championships here and there – and all these stories are true and not just theses or fantasies. But... I do stand to it... if you have the best players you most probably will win. Let’s turn the page to Soccer: In the most famous European leagues always dominate the clubs with the most money. And in this European Club-Soccer-System it’s as simple as that: If you have the most money you can buy the best players. Unfortunately this system didn’t copy the great North American Pro-Sports with their draft-, trade, and some sort of salary-cap-system. The richest teams (Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United, Milan, Inter, Bayern München)...these teams are the richest (forgive me if I did forget the one or the other) and by far the most succesful. We have thousands of other teams competing with much better team-chemistry, much better game-strategies, much better atmosphere and much more disciplined workers on the field... but they never will have a chance vs these most rich teams with the very best players. Wins vs these teams were and always will be exceptions. In the European hockey-leagues it’s the same story, at least in the tendency. The richer teams have basically the better players and are more succesful, again... always with exceptions...but as the word exception tells...there are exceptions.
In NHL-Hockey it’s not so obvious because of the great system with the yearly draft, trades and salary-cap. This is a absolutely clever and exciting pro-sport-system, I admire it. It makes this business so much more interesting! But in the very end....I come to the same simple conclusion: If you have the best players, you most probably will win! Earlier I did tell that this simple strategy is just simple on first sight because you have never endless money and you have the draft. So all your decisions will show you another side of the coin. You pay a price for everything you do and all this means that you have to be very clever – and be lucky - to build a winner!
So what would I do to try to build a winner within budget-restrictions – such as salary-caps – or working within a European team with just small money because I just can’t take the best players? First of all I would ask myself critical questions?
1 Shall I spend multimillions for star-players and then have less money compared to other teams to spend for complementary-players?
2. What positions are the most important ones? For what positions I shall spend most money?
3. How important is experience? Shall I pay players for what they did achieve in the past? Do they bring this extra to the team? How valuable is it to have this experience compared to the sometimes lack of energy when they are older?
4. How important is the coaching-staff? Means, how much money is it worth to spend for coaches?
My answers:
I would start with a nucleus of 9 really good players. If you have 9 really good players you can survive as a hockey-team. So I would concentrate to spend my money fully on these nine players in the following priority:
1.1 Most important for me are the No1. and No.2 defensemen! I
would spend most money for them.
1.2 You need two very good centermen and at least one very good,
productive winger
1.3 Then again I would go for a d-man (No. 3).
1.4 It’s time now for the No.1-goalie. To survive you need decent
goaltending.
1.5 I would go for another two wingers who bring something
special to the table (e.g. speed or strength or shooting, or excellent two-
way-play).
way-play).
After that you have to fill your basket with complementary-players. Personally I would have just very small money left for these complementary-players. Even in Europe – where people are much more sensitive to big differencies in salaries – I wouldn’t care about – and I would try to find players who don’t care about too much – who will be just proud to play with certain star-players and are more or less free of jealousy. My complementary-players would be either very strong character-players and/or young or even very young players. I don’t see a big enough quality-difference between an average skilled player and a below-average skilled player with great character. I don’t see a big enough quality-difference between an experienced average skilled player and a promising young or very young player who has a good character. Of course – as I told earlier – it’s always a question of compromises and in the very end – I would definitely loose some quality with my players 10-22. But the key-question is: Would I lose more than I did theoretically win with my 1-9 strategy?
I guess I did answer already the questions 1 and 2. What is my answer to the question No. 3?
Experience is slightly overrated in my eyes and what I absolutely don’t like about experience is to pay a player for what he did achieve in his career before. I don’t want to pay for what a player did do in the past, maybe even for another team. I would be prepared to pay good or even very good money for the present performance and even extra bonuses if something unexpected positive will happen. Examples what support my theses that experience is slightly overrated: The Pittsburgh Penguins did win the Stanley Cup with extremely young key-players and you actually can tell the same about the Chicago Blackhawks.
Coming to my question No. 4: How important is the coaching-staff? It’s very important in my eyes but not so much as it seems to be e.g. in European Soccer and in Swiss hockey where coaches are sometimes even better payed than the best players. An excellent head-coach has in my eyes an approx. value of a decent second or very good third-line-player. So, of course, it’s very important to choose the right coach, you can’t take this decision serious enough but on the other hand don’t let yourself get fooled by unrealistic expectations if you have a good coach. It’s more important to have the best players than to have the best coach. Various studies from American pro-sports support this theses. The questions and answers about what is a good coach will be the subject of one my next blogs. In the tendency underrated is the value of a good assistant-coach. I guess the coaching-package (combination of head-coach and assistant-coach) is very important. The assistant-coach basically should complement the head-coach and brings everything to the table what a head-coach is missing. E.g. if the headcoach is a extroverted, impulsive, emotional guy it’s important that the assistant is more introverted, analytical and the other way round. If a head-coach has very good knowledge about forwards it’s a good idea to hire an assistant who is specialized about defensemen and so on.
Another aspect is hiring of players, trading for players and drafting for players. There are two theories about this: Always drafting, trading or hiring players for what you actually need in terms of position - what your team is lacking - or do the same with the philosophy „best player available“. I’m a strong believer in the theory „best player available“ because all your players, especially your best players are always also assets on the trade-market. Of course it’s a complicated way to get just indirectly what you actually need, it takes time and energy but if you want to be best you have to pay this price. So I would always go for the best player available, either in the draft or in trades. I might end up with having three No.1-centermen and just one of them can fill this role in my team. So what? I will trade them and I will have an excellent return on invest if I’m a good trader. If I’m actually looking for a reliable and steady defensive d-man and a good one is on the market but at the same time a very good centerman is on the market for a comparable price, I definitely would go for the centerman and then would try to turn him into not only a reliable/steady defensive-defenseman but into an excellent defensive defenseman. This strategy needs time and will cause some pain on the way down the road but in the end, in my eyes, it will be the more succesful strategy in the big picture.
So, all this is my theory what you should think of if you try to build a succesful hockey-team. Yes, it’s theory, I do know very well from my life-experience – but I also don’t overrate my life-experience...smile... – that theory and what happens in reality are not always the same pair of shoes and we all have to be flexible in our minds and react sometimes fast to unexpected happenings. But still, you should have a certain strategy and I tried to paint mine. Looking forward to discuss this!
Thomas Roost / Central Scouting Europe, NHL
Thomas Roost / Central Scouting Europe, NHL
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Positive thinking makes me feel sick!
Summer-time is always the time when GMs and coaches never stop to talk about how much better the team will be in the next season, how moch harder they did work in summer and in case of lacking spectacular transfers – how much better the team-chemistry is in this „new“ team. If a key-player suffers a serious-injury this is not bad at all it just means that other players have the chance to step up. If an old veteran is leaving it means this team has now more energy because of younger players. If an old veteran is new in a team it means that this transfer brings much needed experience to the team. If last season the team was not succesful with an extroverted, outspoken, active and rhetoric coach the same team has now an introverted analytical coach who is very good in developping young players. The very same coach was fired from a team who then did hire a more loud, active, motivational coach who will bring more energy to the bench and to the locker-room. If you talk behind closed doors with GMs they sometimes make jokes about another team who did offer their player „X“ a very good contract and signed him. „How stupid they are to offer player „X“ so much money“. If I talk to the other GM who „stupidly“ signed player „X“, he is making jokes about the other GM who did sign player „Y“ from their team. „How stupid they are to offer „Y“ so much money...
In summer everybody did do just everything perfect. Everybody could realise their „dream-transfers“ – „we did follow this player since many years“... is an often heard sentence when presenting new import-player „Z“. If you then start to discuss a little bit more about this player you not very seldom will find out that they don’t know much more about this player than the stats and the selling-rhetorics of his agent“. Similar things happen in the NHL. Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke advertises his latest big trade – what did bring hard-nosed defenseman Dion Phaneuf from Calgary to Toronto – as a franchise-player with superstar-abilities. At the same time some discret voices in Calgary celebrate the excellent return on invest for Phaneuf because they think that Phaneuf is one of the most overrated players in the league... In summer everybody is with everything always happy and for everybody just good things are ahead.
All these rhetorics come from the completey overrated „positive-thinking-theories“ . They tell that if you just think positive strong enough you never will lose. In the end everybody is thinking just positive – and not just this – in summer in hockey everybody is just thinking naivly, unbelievable positive, just to find out three or four weeks later that they didn’t think positive enough... These theories even go so far that e.g. Lance Armstrong tells that the best thing happened in his life to him was that he got cancer.... PLEASE???? This is so sick! What a slap in the face of millions of people who did lose the fight with cancer. They did lose it because they didn’t think positive enough....common...please stop it!!! If you get a diagnose of a very serious illness this is NOT positive, it’s VERY bad! If in the Swiss league Biel’s key-player Emanuel Peter suffers a serious knee-injury this is not a chance for other players to step up, this is VERY bad for Biel and for their coaches! If you lose key-players because other teams offer more money – this is not the chance to bring more energy to the team with younger players – this is a serious loss of quality in your team! If the Pittsburgh Penguins lose Sidney Crosby because of a serious groin-tear it means that the Pens are in deep trouble to catch a playoff-spot. Why we don’t want to see the reality?
Please don’t get me wrong: I am a strong supporter of judging a glass of water half-full in stead of half-empty. But if the glass is not only empty but even broken on the floor – so we have to name it, loud and clear. There is nothing positive about a broken glass on the floor. We have to learn that the opposite of positive thinking is not pessimism. It’s the ability, to judge situations realistically and to ask critical questions. But especially in some cheap manager rhetoric-educations you learn that people who ask critical questions and put question-marks to new strategies or ideas are not the employees you need. These people are in danger to get fired sooner or later. The same cheap rhetoric is invading sports-franchises more and more. When will we find out that we just got trapped by trivial psychological theories?
Thomas Roost, Central Scouting Europe, NHL
Saturday, September 11, 2010
NHL-Draft 2010 / Goalies
To my surprise two goalies were drafted in the first round. While Jack CAMPBELL was not a surprise at all - in my eyes he is a "high-end" prospect and already VERY close to be NHL-ready - the Phoenix Coyotes' pick Mark VISENTIN (27th overall) came with quite a big surprise, for me at least. Also in the second round two goaltenders were picked - so we have four goalies in the top60 in this draft and all this in a year I really did believe it will be not a good draft for goalies. Thanks to "Goalies World" I have some interesting statistical facts: In 2009 the first four goalies picked in the NHL-Entry-draft were from Europe. This year it's more than the opposite: The first seven goalies picked in the 2010 NHL-entry-draft are all from North America! 21 goalies did get picked overall and only one of them is under 6 feet tall (Cody ROSEN, New York Islanders, he is "only" 5.11). 9 of the mentioned 21 goalies are 6.02 or taller! All this means that the trend of selecting big, tall goalies is ongoing. Personally I do agree with the tendency of counting on taller goalies, good size is definitely an advantage because nowadays a lot of tall goalies are quick, fast and mobile at the same time. However... I also think that the latest drafting-trend towards goalies is a bit exaggerated, I guess the "being taller means being better goalie-wisdom" is slightly overrated. What's on the horizon for 2011? Again I personally think it's a bad draft-year in terms of goalies but maybe again I will be surprised in June 2011.
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