The NHL’s New Tracking Data Introduces More Ways for Teams to Get Analytics Wrong

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesIf you’re a Dallas Stars fan, you’ve likely been hearing a lot of dirty words lately. CEO Jim Lites’ infamous tirade might as well have been an ad for Urban Dictionary. Head coach Jim Montgomery used the dreaded M-word about a franchise he’s now a big part of. For my part, I’d like to talk about another dirty word and its synonyms.

Analytics. Fancy stats. Numbers. Metrics. Statistics. Figures.

It’s impossible to talk analytics without running into a bunch of verbal obstacles. “Traditionalists” tend to hate them. Sometimes they’ll politely ask you to throw them out the window. Sometimes they’ll run the classic either-or fallacy of arguing that statistics…