Panthers, Coyotes take lumps, but see benefits from analytics approach

PALM BEACH, Fla. – The Florida Panthers and Arizona Coyotes say they don’t live and die by analytics.

Even though last offseason and partway into this season, the two teams made off-ice moves that bent further towards puck possession, they tried to maintain that more goes into their organizations than just advanced stats.

“Analytics gives us the information to maybe go look at a player or see some positives in a player that maybe we want to look at,” Panthers executive chairman Peter Luukko said. “But by no means are we an analytically driven organization.”

Said Coyotes co-owner Anthony LeBlanc, specifically about first-year general manager John Chayka, who in the past was seen as an analytics wiz kid, “Analytics is one piece and it’s certainly helping him, but John is just a very intelligent young man who is wise beyond his years and I feel he’s doing the job in an exceptional manner.”

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Hockey contest now]

Despite their best efforts, it’s still hard to ignore that both teams are seen as as organizations on the front-end of putting more stock into advanced stats.

During the summer, the Panthers gave Eric Joyce and Steve Werier, who were both more analytically inclined, bigger roles with the team as assistant general managers while making Tom Rowe general manager and moving previous GM Dale Tallon to a more scouting centric management position.

The Coyotes fired general manager Don Maloney and replaced him with the 27-year-old Chayka.

Then after 22 games, the Panthers fired coach Gerard Gallant and replaced him with Rowe. Overall it appeared that Gallant was fired over issues with the new stats-happy front office.

Long-term it’s unclear how these moves will play out, but in the short-term, both squads have struggled. The Panthers are just one game over .500 at 12-11-4 while the Coyotes have the second-worst record in the Western Conference at 8-13-4. Since Gallant’s firing, the Panthers have gone 1-1-2.

“It’s all part of the game. Now it has been several years. There have been some clubs who have been doing it more than others but, if you’re asking me specifically it’s part of our makeup in terms of everything,” Predators general manager David Poile said. “The cliché or asterisk again is it’s just one part of everything we do to make an evaluation – an evaluation of individual players, on trades, on drafting players, on rating players in our game, how we performed in a game, not just looking at the score, but it’s statistics, analytics, it’s video, it’s all sorts of analysis.”

When the Panthers fired Gallant there seemed to be some analytics backlash in the hockey community. Gallant was a little more old school in his techniques, and was successful in pushing this style. Last season he guided the team to a franchise best 103 points, and was over .500 at the time the organization let him go.

Luukko pointed out the narrative that Gallant was fired solely over analytical issues was overblown.

“I think it’s a real misnomer that under (owner) Vinny Viola that we have just become an analytical team. It isn’t true,” Luukko said. “Analytics are very important and every team now is using analytics. It’s really just one piece of the decision process. You look at a Dale Tallon, he has probably one of the best hockey eyes in the game.”

At their core, Luukko said the Panthers still rely on the human element of making decisions.

“(Viola and co-owner Doug Cifu) both have an analytical background in what they do in the financial world, but getting to know Vinny, he’s an entrepreneur who also goes by gut,” Luukko said. “I think as a pair of owners they have their analytical financial backgrounds, but they’re ‘by their gut’ entrepreneurs.”

That doesn’t mean the team doesn’t place a great value on analytics, though.

“Personally, I’ve always been a stats freak. Analytics are so important in our business as we get into dynamic pricing and looking at how you run a business and it has really spilled into sports and hockey in particular,” Luukko said. “I think it’s very, very important because it reinforces some things you may be thinking on the business or hockey side and you may see an indicator or two so you say, ‘maybe I’ll pay attention to something.’”

Despite some of the organizational changes the team is still set up well for the future with several core players locked up to long-term contracts.

“If you’re going to make a run and compete for a championship, you have to have a core for that five, seven, eight year period and that’s really what we’ve done as an organization and what Vinny and Doug have supported financially,” Luukko said. “That’s where our real growth is, that’s our upside and that’s really where our focus is, is really growing and coaching the core.”

The Coyotes situation is somewhat different in part because Chayka hasn’t just pushed analytics, but also used some different and creative managerial techniques.

Last summer he was able to use cap space to add assets to the team through taking on salary from retired players still under contract. This enabled the Coyotes to bring in younger players while also giving them future flexibility when their dead contracts expire. Before Chayka, the Coyotes said they didn’t fully grasp how they could turn their salary cap situation into a position of negotiating power.

“What we like about what John’s doing is he’s looking at things very differently, he’s not looking at it in a normal silo’d manner. Yes, the analytics is one piece, it’s one of the tools he brings, but just look at the fact that he utilized something that we had as a tool that we didn’t think was a tool, which was our cap space,” LeBlanc said. “The fact that that translated into getting (Lawson) Crouse and getting (Jakob) Chychryn. Those are two players for the future. I’d say that’s a big, impressive move.“

In some regards, because of his strong statistical background, Chayka came in with expectations that may have seemed too high, at least externally. Though the Coyotes have seen progress in several areas under his watch, Chayka’s presence hasn’t led to an immediate cure-all.

[Follow Puck Daddy on Facebook]

“Did we think we’d be doing better than we are currently in the standings? Yes. Were we planning a parade route? Not quite yet,” LeBlanc said. “What we told him was ‘build this thing based on the models we’ve seen in Chicago. Based on the models we’ve seen in Detroit. Don’t go sell everything off to help us this year, everything you do this year better be focused on what’s coming down the road.’ And that’s what he has done. Our expectations – we certainly didn’t have any expectations that it was going to be just a complete switch.”

Overall it’s probably unfair to formulate an immediate opinion on the analytical directions of both organizations based off some of their recent moves. They’re both trying to make consistent winners for many years, and it may not be clear that their approaches will breed success for some time.

“Obviously some fans are upset, and Gerard was a very popular coach for good reason. Gerard is an incredible human being, so any time there’s change, in Philadelphia we relieved Peter Laviolette of his duties – still a personal friend and a very popular coach and yes, there are some fans who are still upset,” Luukko said, harkening back to his days working with the Philadelphia Flyers. “I think at the end of the day I think they understand the bottom line is Vinny’s committed to winning.”

– – – – – – –

Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper

MORE FROM YAHOO SPORTS