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Analytics just piece of puzzle to Leafs’ Dubas

Dubas

The Toronto Maple Leafs caught the hockey world’s attention when they hired Kyle Dubas to be an assistant general manager. Dubas, who previously served as the general manager of the OHL’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, stands out from the crowd, both due to his age (28) and his advocacy of analytics.

The usefulness of advanced statistics in hockey has been heavily debated in recent years, but teams seem to be gradually moving towards accepting them as another evaluation tool. The fact that the Maple Leafs, a franchise which has previously been criticized for ignoring analytics, brought Dubas on board makes him an embodiment of that philosophical shift, at least to an extent. However, Dubas doesn’t see himself as just that stats guy.

“People trying to determine whether I’m a hockey guy or an analytics guy, I mean, the reality of it that I’m someone whose worked in hockey my entire life that over the past number of years has begun to develop a usefulness for analytics that have really helped us (with the Greyhounds) over time,” Dubas said in an interview on Marek Vs. Wyshynski. He added, “It’s a piece of the puzzle, it’s not the whole secret sauce or anything like that ... It’s been a big help to us in reducing uncertainty and just gathering more information. It’s not a one-way or the other proportion.”

Dubas believes that anything that happens on the ice, so long as it can be clearly explained, can potentially be quantified. He also doesn’t buy into the argument that analytics don’t work in fluid sport like hockey.

“You can kind of reach and track a bunch of different things that aren’t really mainstream yet and I think it all has value,” Dubas said. “It’s just a matter of ... trying to find out which pieces of data can help us to eliminate uncertainty and which ones are maybe not what we thought they were.”

It’s not a substitute for watching the game and scouting players that way, but he feels the information that analytics provides him with does enhance that process.

You can listen to the full interview below:

Related:

Leafs hire 28-year-old stats advocate as assistant GM

Babcock on analytics: ‘I love the information’

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