Saskatoon coach bringing NHL-style analytics to bantam hockey
Kelly Provost | CBC News | Posted: October 27, 2018 11:00 AM | Last Updated: October 29, 2018
Coach of the Saskatoon Outlaws using numbers to an extent rarely seen in bantam hockey
Danton Danielson is used to dealing with numbers. In his day job, he's an evaluation manager who specializes in data analysis.
But these days, he's using numbers for something entirely different—to help fuel his passion for minor hockey.
The Saskatoon hockey coach is using advanced analytics, an approach that has become popular in the NHL, to help him coach minor hockey. Some observers say he might be the only bantam coach in Canada to use numbers that way.
Danielson coaches the Saskatoon Outlaws of the Saskatchewan Bantam AA Hockey League.
He is most interested in some newer statistical models that give him and his assistant coaches insight into "the process of our team and not just our outcomes."
"Hockey, I think, of all the major sports, is one where there is quite a bit of luck involved in the outcomes — more so than some of the other major sports," he said.
"So you can play poorly and you can still have a good result. You can win a game. Or you can play well and maybe have a bad result."
The process
One of the Outlaws' assistant coaches, James Byers, records data from the stands during games.
That data is then entered into spreadsheets and programs that Danielson has designed, which in turn produce reports on player and team performance in a game or over a season in a number of statistical categories.
Danielson said they try to model their statistics off of ones used to analyze the NHL.
"We track things like Corsi (shot attempt percentage), Scoring Chance Percentage, and Zone Starts, all of which are key stats that analysts covering the NHL would look to," he said.
"We also try to look at things like how one individual player does when he's on the ice with another individual versus how he does when he's on the ice with others."
A unique approach
According to the executive director of Saskatoon Minor Hockey, Kelly Boes, those methods set Danielson and the Outlaws apart.
"Well, I don't think anybody uses the approach Danton does to the extent he does," Boes said. "I think there's some dabbling. But by no means would I say it's widespread at the Bantam AA level in the province. So, yeah, he is very unique in that regard."
Hockey's an extremely conservative sport. It takes a long time for new ideas to take root.
- Saskatoon Outlaws head coach Danton Danielson
Colin Parenteau, who used to coach with Danielson on the Saskatoon Riverkings Midget AA team, agrees.
"Talking with other coaches, I get the sense that Danton is the only guy that I've ever heard of that's doing this type of stuff," Parenteau said. "That's not to say that it's not happening or anything. I'm not that well-connected or anything. But I think that, as far as I know, Danton is the only person doing this."
Danielle Berehowsky runs a hockey analytics firm with her brother, former NHLer Drake Berehowsky. Statstrack provides hockey teams throughout North America with software that tracks and manages a variety of statistics in real time. She said they don't know of any other bantam teams using Danielson's approach.
"Even if [other teams] are tracking info, they are definitely not using to calculate Corsi, etc," she said via email.
Answering the skeptics
Danielson said he hears some snickers, or people questioning if his team is relying too much on the numbers, but he said his team never makes a decision about their roster based solely on stats.
"Really, it's about spurring conversations about our team's performance," he said. "The numbers are one extra piece of information that you can use to contribute to that sort of decision-making process."
As for the critics, Danielson has become accustomed to skepticism in the hockey community.
"Hockey's an extremely conservative sport," he said. "It takes a long time for new ideas to take root. Even if there's a lot of science behind it and evidence and data, the community is such that we typically want to keep things the way they are — a very traditionalist approach."
A coach's eyes opened
Parenteau remembers when he became a convert. He and Danielson were coaching the Riverkings in their first year of existence.
That 2014-15 campaign was the first season Danielson employed his approach. Parenteau recalls how the numbers revealed the strengths of an undervalued player.
Parenteau said the coaches noticed turnovers and other mistakes in defenceman Antonio Di Paolo's game.
"And then we would run the numbers, and we would look at it again, and we would see that he was at the absolute high end of the stats that we were taking over time," Parenteau said. "When we started seeing that, we started paying more attention to the good things he was doing rather than the mistakes he was making and we realized that he was probably our best defenceman."
Parenteau said the data revealed Di Paolo's mistakes were not costing the team games and that the young blueliner was driving the possession the coaches wanted to see, no matter who he played with.
"So it was a big revelation for me, anyway," Parenteau said. "It was an eye-opener that the eye test is not the best way to go. There's a time and a place for it, for sure, but you need something to keep you objective in your player evaluations."
Gratitude of the once undervalued
Di Paolo said he recognized early on that Danielson and Parenteau were "really focused on the numbers," but wasn't aware of this conversation between coaches or his own possession numbers.
"In a way, I'm kind of glad," Di Paolo said. "They just did a really great job of just letting us go out and play."
Di Paolo, who is now one of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League's top-scoring defencemen in his age group with the La Ronge Ice Wolves, credited his coaches' style that season for a lot of his growth.
"Those kind of glaring errors I may have had that year were almost necessary for me to get to where I am now," he said. "I mean, they did a really, really good job at refining my game. They really focused more holistically on us as hockey players and as young men to just improve kind of as the season went along. I think that's why so many guys were able to graduate on to the next level."
According to Di Paolo, almost the entire team ended up graduating to the Midget AAA and Junior ranks, "which is not something that a lot of Midget AA teams do." One secured an NCAA scholarship with Yale.
Determining the value of the numbers
The Riverkings ended up winning a provincial championship that season. Parenteau said they didn't lose a game after Christmas.
Last season, the Outlaws finished first overall in their 22-team league —their highest finish since Danielson came on.
But Danielson's belief in numbers doesn't allow him to credit his statistics-based approach for his team's success.
"There's no way to conclude that we did well because of our use of analytics," he said. "In order to draw that conclusion, we'd have to know how that exact team would have done without the use of analytics and that is obviously not possible. Our use of analytics is one small part of how we coach, and our coaching is one small part of how our team does on the ice."
He is convinced, however, that the numbers have made him a better coach.
"I'd probably say that it's taught me to be a little bit more patient and try to really understand the performance of our group before we do a whole bunch of tinkering," he said. "Or, at least, if we're going to tinker, recognize that we're going to need to wait a little while and figure out what the actual results are based on that tinkering."
But Danielson said he still has his own questions that need answering.
"I think the debate is settled that it certainly helps, I don't think there's any debate about that anymore —the question is, often times, 'How much does it help? How much can you read into it?' And I still don't even know the answer to that."