Bruce Dowbiggin
When Analytics Fail Is It Time To Call In Legends?
It seemed only a short while ago that the trend in NHL management was going to toward analytics and new-age concepts of building a Stanley Cup winner. The poster boy for this movement was Kyle Dubas, hired by the Maple Leafs at age 32 to be their general manager. The idea was to take a more empirical approach to winning, eschewing the old sweats of the past.
Dubas, who’d been a GM in the OHL with Sault Ste Marie, represented the ascent of using analytics to determine what makes a team click. It also was a concession to the complications of salary-cap management, the byzantine art of juggling egos and eight-year contracts. It was believed that individuals schooled on that side of the business would be best for the new challenges.
Dubas was not alone in promoting something other than the old “try harder” school of management. Every team made a concession small or large to the new orthodoxy. Needless to say the hockey establishment saw this as a threat to their hegemony in the sport. (Using the term analytics can get you tossed out of a few hockey bars.) Dubas’s firing does not mark the failure of analytics.
Even as they bend a knee to the digital ways of doing business, NHL owners still are fans of the game. Yes, they want the perks in winning. But they also love to hang around the legends of their franchise, guys they grew up idolizing. So when fans get restless, NHL owners often turn to the legendary players of the franchise to take the heat off them.
A classic example covered in our 2015 book Ice Storm was how the hapless Vancouver Canucks, winners of zero Stanley Cups since 1969, pivoted from progressive GM Mike Gillis, who’d taken the team to within a game of the Cup in 2011. When the club failed to advance past the first round in 2012/ 2013, however, owner Francesco Aquilini began taking heat in the market.
A tangled trade controversy with goalie Roberto Longo only exacerbated the tension. When forcing Gillis to hire firebrand coach John Tortorella failed to improve the club’s fortunes, Aquilini handed the GM post to franchise legend Trevor Linden, who had no managerial experience. Since sacking Gillis, the Canucks have failed to make the postseason seven times in nine seasons.
A similar situation has emerged in Calgary where the team canned GM Brad Treliving (who immediately replaced Dubas in Toronto) after missing the playoffs in 2022-23. When given an ultimatum between Treliving and hard-ass coach Darryl Sutter, principal owner Murray Edwards opted to keep Sutter, who had two years left on his contract. When that brainwave went over like a lead balloon in the fan base, the Flames pivoted to hiring Craig Conroy, fan favourite and (here’s a hint) a guy already under contract with the Flames.
The GM shuffle either indicated loyalty to a Flames employee or the fact that Calgary has become a toxic job site in the NHL due to the meddling of its principal owner who flips quarters like manhole covers. Sensing Conroy alone might not be able to placate the base, Flames legend Jarome Iginla was brought in as a special assistant to put a nice face on the floundering Flames.
The genial Iginla has no managerial experience, and new rookie coach Ryan Huska is not going to enjoy Iginla breathing over his shoulder— no matter how pleasant a guy the Hall of Fame is. But if this uncomfortable management structure buys peace for the owner (who principally lives in Switzerland these days) then it will be seen as a success in the owners’ box.
CALGARY, CANADA – MARCH 3: Jarome Iginla #12 of the Calgary Flames jumps over the boards to start his shift during their NHL game against the Vancouver Canucks at the Scotiabank Saddledome on March 3, 2013 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
Making the Calgary situation more perilous, the other owners are aging, no one locally is a natural candidate to spend the billion dollars it takes to run an NHL club, and the Flames new arena is still, at best, three or four years away. Good luck. So they’re hiring at discount prices.
Calgary is hardly alone. In Philadelphia, Flyers hero Daniel Briere has been handed the job of resurrecting the proud franchise. The Flyers have missed the playoffs the last three seasons, and so Briere has carte blanche (for now) to blow things up in Philly. He’s got two first-round picks at the moment and has done a three-team trade. So he’s been active. Adding ex-Flyer legend John LeClair is another attempt to placate fans.
Briere says, “We’re going to try to make things happen”. But the question is, how long will the faithful remember Briere the Hero when the current team is a mess on the ice? Former heroes don’t like their reputations tarnished by making the wrong moves.
Mike Grier is another former fan favourite, this time in San Jose, where he took over the GM job from longtime stalwart Doug Wilson. Grier hired his old college buddy David Quinn to coach the toothless Sharks, but you know his stale date is coming soon if San Jose doesn’t get moving fast. Ditto for former-stars-turned GMs Chris Drury (New York Rangers) and Rob Blake (L.A. Kings).
Joe Sakic is one legend-turned-general-manager who did succeed, taking over the Colorado Avalanche is 2014 and helping to guide them to a Stanley Cup in 2022. Sakic was aided by taking over the Avs at their lowest point, which earned them superstars like Nathan McKinnon and Cale Makar in the draft. He won the GM of the year in 2022 and has now moved out of the GM chair.
Red Wings legend and current GM Steve Yzerman is unique, having built the Tampa Bay Lightning into Stanley Cup winners before returning to Detroit to resuscitate the pitiful Red Wings, who’ve gone from model NHL franchise between 1990-2017 to seven straight playoff misses since. It would take something monumental for the Detroit fanbase to turn on Yzerman, but there is an expectation that he needs success— soon.
So analytics may not have conquered the NHL as yet, but summoning team legends still has its fans in owners desperate to have someone else to blame.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
On a recent trip to the Fredericton Playhouse to see PEI’s splendid The East Pointers we couldn’t help but notice amongst the coming attractions an appearance by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. As far as we know, Miller disappeared over the British Channel in 1944 on his way to play a concert for the troops post D-Day.
Since then a succession of people have carried his musical heritage under the Miller name. Most of them have joined Miller in the great bandstand in the sky. It is safe to say that the number of people who heard anything by Miller himself live are virtually nil. Still, someone is still buying tickets to hear A String of Pearls, Pennsylvania 6-500, Chattanooga Choo-Choo and In The Mood.
Perhaps it was serendipity but seeing that Miller was still a thing came shortly after the arrival of a final Beatles song “Now and Then”. It’s not as long ago as the final Glenn Miller original cut, but “Now and Then” is the first original Beatles music since the 1970s. Which is when this lacklustre John Lennon composition was born from a demo cut by Lennon.
Its provenance has been talked about by Beatles obsessives ever since. Frankly they’d be excited to hear Lennon/ McCartney read the Liverpool phone book. (Which won’t be any less underwhelming than this song.) Now And Then stayed out of the public realm, probably because George Harrison (d. 2001) hated it, and the recording was scratchy at best.
But thanks to the officious Paul McCartney cleaning it up in the studio and AI producing a catchy video to accompany the song “Now and Then” is on the Billboard chart with a bullet. Where it will probably stay for a while. No doubt this artful dodge will put the idea of reviving other dead musical icons into the heads of their colleagues and supporters.
The AI variations already extend past music. “@ilumine_ai This has been my first test of an experiment I’m doing, which is why it might feel a bit rough. It might not seem like it, but this video shows a single, uncut take at normal speed, where I move through a 3D stage that I am generating at will and in real time.”
Can some clever soul use AI to create a new Humphrey Bogart movie using previous material? What about reviving Katherine Hepburn from her many films? Could Glenn Miller suddenly emerge from the mists to lead his band in Fredericton? We already know about The Beatles.
There ramifications, says cartoonist/commentator Scott Adams.. “If you let ChatGPT answer without constraints, it gives you the “approved narrative,” also known as bullshit. In other words, you can use AI to give you any answer you want on political questions by manipulating the allowed “experts.”
No wonder the Screen Actors Guild went on strike this year to protect the properties of stars dead and alive. What security will they have if AI makes them redundant? AI is, in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
To say nothing of the AI implications for sports. Can AI replicate the greatest of the past? Already there’s a slightly cheesy commercial running in which present-day Wayne Gretzky counsels 18-year-old Wayne Gretzky on the future. But could AI create a better NHL mixing Gretz, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr and Bobby Hull with the best of today? A league with no injuries, no travel fatigue, no bad coaching? Ditto for the other leagues. An NFL with Joe Montana, an NBA with Michael Jordan, an MLB with Barry Bonds?
In Canadian politics AI could revive Pierre Elliot Trudeau to assist his dimwitted son (“Interest rates are at historic lows,” PMJT, 2020). Bill Davis could bring back the days of Blue Ontario. Ralph Klein could recreate the Alberta Advantage. If someone younger and more charismatic pops up you can use them in the present. With an AI figure waiting in the wings for when the real politicians eventually screw up.
In the US-AI, the leading candidates for U.S. president in 2024 are creakingly old. Democrats are in a lather over Joe Biden’s decrepit state as he hit 81 this week (he’d be 87 when a possible second term ended). Polls show Americans are not fooled by the grinning Amphetamine Joe staggering up the stairs of Air Force One.
Republicans are alternatively exhilarated and exhausted by the prospect of loopy 78-year-old Donald Trump carrying their banner next November. With Trump it’s less age than instability. Were he remotely stable he’d be leading Biden by 15 points in the polls.
In the Senate and House of Representatives octogenarian and nonagenarian members are literally dying at their desks for want of term limits. Across the political spectrum voters and media are asking, “Is this the best we can do?” Some recall the movie Dave where Kevin Kline plays a doppelgänger for a comatose U.S. president. Maybe that might work?
Or what if AI could revive JFK or Ronald Reagan in their primes? Or John McCain and Ruth Bader Ginsberg? “Now and Then” would be an appropriate slogan for re-inserting these tried & true political figures into the present, using their former selves to re-craft today’s arguments. (We’ve seen how it might work since most believe that Biden is simply the conduit for a third Obama term.)
Anything has to be better than two old guys who could’ve heard “I’ve Got A Gal In Kalamazoo” when it was originally released by Glenn Miller in 1942.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
“But you know what, man, keep your English, because we’re grabbing the Cup, and we’re bringing it to Montreal, and we’re bringing it to Quebec, and we’re bringing it home!”— from the French rant by Montreal Alouette Marc-Antoine Dequoy
While the 110th Grey Cup win by Montreal over favoured Winnipeg was a classic comeback, it’s now being tainted by an issue that’s much older than 110 years. Canada’s bilingualism/ biculturalism debate. Having already relegated the game to cable-only TSN/ RDS the CFL must have decided that— who cares— we are in Hamilton, Ontario. Why bother with all that annoying bilingual signage?
After all, no one cares that the American band Green Day is playing at halftime of the game when any number of Canadian acts are available for the gig. Who’s going to bitch about a few advertisements? Reality check, aisle three. Language grievance is always in season in Québec.
As the French media covering the game noted in the days before the game the signage around the stadium was exclusively English-only. Didier Orméjuste of RDS observed en français, “The CFL is supposed to be a bilingual league but there is not one Coupe Grey sign in the stadium. Can’t say I’m surprised.”
The league crest at centre field read CFL only. Not LFC. Considering the efforts the CFL has made prostrating itself before the federal policy of bilingualism (for which it receives public money) it was inexcusable. It was a firing offence. Caught with their pants down the CFL rustled up a few signs around Tim Horton’s Field and led PA announcements with French. But the damage was done.
Which led to the impassioned rant by Als player Marc-Antoine Duquoy in the moments after the Als’ dramatic comeback win. He has since backed off a bit on his comments, saying “I just felt disrespected for me and for my province and for my heritage.” Since then Québec media has pummelled the league for its obtuse behaviour.
Anglo Quebecker Andrew Potter wrote, “The message it sends to Quebecers is this: If the rest of Canada can’t be bothered, why should they?” Memo to Potter: Not sure where you have been, but the rest of Canada dropped cultural football a while ago as a remnant of another time. They don’t care.
Let’s be honest, the official bilingual policy we’ve had was a dry run for the Carbon Tax. It has been a multi-billion dollar sinkhole foisted on the country by Justin Trudeau’s daddy. Like all top-down policies it is permanent and immutable. And useless at its stated goal. Quebec clearly doesn’t need it. The ROC resents it.
Leader of the Government in the House of Commons Pablo Rodriguez looks towards Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as they take part in a press conference during the COVID pandemic in Ottawa on Friday, Oct. 16, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
In cloistered Ottawa it still has a political status that far outstrips its usefulness to the nation. While the Trudeau/ Singh cabal are slashing defence spending, no one dares divert a dime from chasing a failed dream of cultural harmony. At these prices, who needs bilingual postal workers in Moose Jaw? Or Anglo bureaucrats in Granby?
It currently serves as a fig leaf to protect the Liberal strongholds of Anglo Quebeckers and Francophone minorities in the Maritimes and Manitoba. In Québec at least, the majority francophones have steadily eroded any sense of language fairness in the province’s education, business or cultural sectors. The latest is a crushing tuition hike for out-of-province (read: Anglo) students.
The harried Anglos remaining in the province after decades of diaspora are like the white Rhodesians, voting against their best interests in the faint hope that the Liberals will save their dwindling numbers and make it Expo 67 again.
Living in Quebec, Duquoy can be forgiven for thinking that ROC is as obsessed with B&B as are the hyper-vigilant tongue troopers in Québec, who turn every slight into an excuse for more cultural purity. In fact, the ROC is far more concerned with Québec’s permanent dependency on equalization money at the expense of the energy industry it works so fervently to destroy.
The quid pro quo that underpinned the 1960s dreams of B&B— that acceptance of French everywhere would still Québec’s drive for sovereignty— is now Alberta and Saskatchewan pointing out the double standards in the current federation while asking, “Why can’t we make like Québec with a pension plan, police force and control over immigration?”
Hate to break it to Potter and Duquoy, but most in the West would gladly negotiate a new deal with Québec to re-shape the hollow dream that is Trudeau’s Canada. Keep hockey, but work out a deal the way Czechia and Slovakia did to live peaceably in their own way. Make Québec pay for its vanities while ROC hashes out a new working arrangement that reflects the current zeitgeist.
Yes, the CFL booted their Grey Cup presentation. From a business point of view insulting a significant part of your base was capotée. But in its ineptitude the league held up a mirror to the country that thinks you can make this potage of Canadian denial and American cultural pre-eminence still work.
Now, if we can just get Randy Ambrosie and his pals to drop Trudeau’s Diversity delusion from its values we might be onto something really valuable.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
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