TSN.ca: You mentioned having additional information. What types of changes in that way have come in the last year? How has the information process changed?
Morrison: Analytics. I think there’s a greater emphasis on numbers. It’s not to say we didn’t use numbers in the past, but not to this extent. We now have a new department of sports science here that I think is a lot more all-encompassing than what we’ve had in the past, too. And that’s not to say that we weren’t doing good things in the past with that, but I just think that it’s being expanded. There’s just going to be a lot more information on that side of things that perhaps we didn’t have before. Some of these things are new so that’s why it’s an exciting time that way, that if we can find out more things that may help us make better decisions and that’s what we’re trying to do.
TSN.ca: How does some of that stuff filter down to you, in terms of the analytics department? Given how rapidly that’s changing and evolving, how can that be an advantage?
Morrison: Well, I think it can open your eyes sometimes. Your eyes can deceive you when you’re watching a game sometimes. We’ve talked about this in the past about how some players can look ugly and yet be extremely effective. But sometimes you see that and you say ‘He doesn’t look like a player’, but all of a sudden you get all these advanced statistics…and say ‘Okay well these are the guys that are performing’ and it’s made us relook at some players and maybe re-evaluate how we see them or how we think about them and maybe watch more video on them.
That’s kind of the thing that they’ve been doing for us at this point and I believe it may evolve and become even more useful for us as we work with this.
TSN.ca: I found that myself. Sometimes in the past, without some of these numbers, a player could make a big mistake and that would colour the way you looked at him. Whereas now, you can look deeper and say: ‘well they made one mistake in that one instance they touched the puck, but then you look at the greater game and they really had an effect at driving it positively.’ Is that the shift in terms of the numbers helping you where your eyes and your mind might take you in another direction?
Morrison: Yeah, that’s part of it. That’s part of it. People would say in the past, the good players can get away with mistakes. Well, why is it a good player can get away with mistakes and maybe a not-as-good player can’t? Well, maybe it’s because the good player is able to forget about that mistake quicker and then go out and do what he has to do and positively impact the game. Whereas some players they carry that burden of the mistake with them and it affects the rest of their game. So there’s a lot of different ways to look at it. I think it’s probably different for each player. Some players do make mistakes that cost goals, others don’t. It depends on the type of mistake.
But this is again information that the guys are digging deeper and deeper into this and the more we have with that type of thing. It comes down to the decision you make on players and that’s where it’s going to be helpful.
