Interesting piece here by the Globe and Mail’s David Ebner, about the NHL’s plans to “test new technology to track players in action and produce a vast new array of information.”
According to the story, the league intends to start testing technologies next fall, with a new league-wide system possibly in place for 2015-16. To help, the NHL could partner with a company like STATS, which produces a software called SportVU.
Following is a Grantland video (link) about SportVU and the work it does for the NBA:
As we wrote last month, hockey has been a relative late-comer to the revolution in sports analytics. Baseball was the trailblazer, and it’s a big part of basketball now as well.
If a new system is indeed installed by the NHL, the challenge for teams, media and fans will be to cut through the noise and apply the info in a useful manner, and without getting overloaded by the “vast new array of information.”