Three Periods: Yandle wants to act like his Broadway idol; anti-injury technology; NHL notes

Nicholas J. Cotsonika’s Three Periods column appears on Thursdays. This week’s topics include how Keith Yandle fits with the New York Rangers; how NHL teams are using technology to try to reduce injuries; plus notes on the morning skate, something teams needed to avoid before the trade deadline, a good point on analytics by Brian Burke, a good point on money by Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli and one player’s trade deadline ups and downs.

FIRST PERIOD: Keith Yandle will try to emulate his idol on Broadway

Keith Yandle never hated the New York Rangers. He grew up in Boston and liked the Bruins, of course. But he was a fan of the NHL, especially of Brian Leetch, who had grown up in New England, spent a season at Boston College and gone on to Broadway.

Yandle had a banner with Leetch’s picture on it. He wore Leetch’s No. 2 until high school. He loved how Leetch generated offense as a defenseman.

“You’ve got to root for a guy like Brian Leetch, the way he plays,” he said. “Try to emulate his game a little bit.”

Now Yandle might be “the final piece,” in the words of Arizona Coyotes general manager Don Maloney, as the Rangers go for their first Stanley Cup since 1994, when Leetch won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player.

Rangers GM Glen Sather went all-in Sunday by acquiring Yandle, minor-league defenseman Chris Summers and a fourth-round pick from the Coyotes for defenseman John Moore, stud forward prospect Anthony Duclair, a first-rounder and a second-rounder.

Yandle is not Leetch. But he will try to emulate his game a little bit.

“I think he’s going to be real good,” said Rangers coach Alain Vigneault. “You can see the poise he has with the puck 5-on-5 and on the power play. He’s going to get used to the way we play here, and I’m very confident he’s going to be a real efficient player for us.”

Yandle spent nine seasons with the Coyotes. He put up as many as 11 goals and 59 points in a season and played as deep as the Western Conference final. But he heard his name in trade rumors, partly because of other teams’ interest in him, partly because of the development of the Coyotes’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson.

The Coyotes have been awful this season. Management was looking to the future. Yandle had one year left on his contract, so he could bring more of a return than if he were a pending unrestricted free agent.

“I thought maybe if I was going to get traded,” Yandle said, “it probably would have been this year.”

The Coyotes were in Boston on Saturday night. After a 4-1 loss to the Bruins, a ninth straight defeat, the dressing room was quiet. Center Antoine Vermette fought back emotion, knowing he was about to be traded. Captain Shane Doan fought back frustration, embarrassed by the loss, upset he would be saying goodbye to teammates.

Yandle didn’t have much to say in the hallway on his way to visit family and friends. Asked if he’d spoken to Maloney, he said: “No. They do their job, and we do our jobs. There’s nothing we can do either way.”

As the Coyotes were taking off for Phoenix, Vermette spoke to Maloney and found out he had been traded to the Chicago Blackhawks. The Coyotes weren’t sure they wanted to part with Yandle but got serious when the Rangers offered Duclair. They agreed to pay half of Yandle’s salary to get the deal done. His cap hit will be only $2.75 million for the Rangers.

Yandle heard the news Sunday, flew back across the country and played at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. He got in a practice Tuesday, flew to Detroit and then played the Red Wings on Wednesday night without a morning skate.

It isn’t an easy adjustment. Yandle has never been traded before. He has never had to adjust on the fly like this and plays the type of game that requires chemistry. But soon the Rangers should have a defenseman who will get turned around at times, who will turn over the puck at times, but who helps slot the defense better and makes things happen.

The Rangers now have three pairs with a blend of offense and defense: Ryan McDonagh-Dan Girardi, Yandle-Kevin Klein, Marc Staal-Dan Boyle. Vigneault can even out ice time if he wants. He has more options in more situations. Yandle and Boyle can play the points on the power play.

“We’ve got a good, balanced ‘D’ corps,” Klein said. “Any of us can play 20 minutes a game and be solid out there.”

Yandle fits a team that activates its defensemen and attacks with speed – and has Henrik Lundqvist in goal to clean up mistakes when healthy.

“It’s huge,” said Rangers center Derek Stepan. “It’s the way we want to play. As soon as he builds that chemistry with all of us, and you’re starting see it a little bit, it’s going to be really cool to see.”

SECOND PERIOD: Can a device on your back help protect your legs?

The Buffalo Sabres and the Philadelphia Flyers are using technology to monitor players in practice in an attempt to reduce injuries. At least six other NHL teams are interested in starting next season, said Ben Peterson, the sports performance manager at the company Catapult. Some players’ agents are interested, too.

The Sabres and the Flyers have players wear compression shirts with devices that sit between the shoulder blades underneath the pads. The devices have accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers that record 1,000 data points per second used to identify specific movement patterns. They can measure things like the strength of a skating stride or the force of a hit.

Say a graph shows a player striding with less force than usual, or a player striding with less force on one leg than the other. Analysts might be able to tell something’s wrong – fatigue, overcompensation for another injury – and take action before the player hurts his groin.

Say a player is returning from a groin injury. Analysts might be able to know more accurately when he’s back to full strength.

In a recent presentation at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Peterson said the average NHL team lost 252 man-games and $7.53 million in lost salary per season to injuries. He cited a 1999 study that found 79 percent of groin injuries were non-contact and 23.5 percent recurred – and a player was five times more likely to pull a groin during practice.

For now, NHL teams can use this technology only in practice. The Flyers have been using it for two years, the Sabres one. (Asked if they had prevented any injuries, Peterson said that was private information.)

“They basically are self-managed,” Peterson said. “We kind of like support. If they have questions, we can log on and look at stuff. But they do all the work, and they’re the ones putting in the effort and getting the value out of it.”

What about other teams?

“It really kind of started growing after this season had started, and you can imagine it’s hard to really sit down and look at this stuff during the season,” Peterson said. “So I would say we’re having active conversations during the season now with the hope of solidifying those in the off-season. I would say next season you would see a larger number.”

What about the NHL? What about games?

“We have had some very preliminary conversations about looking at stuff like that, but nothing’s been formal or finalized,” Peterson said.

THIRD PERIOD: Notes from around the NHL

— Workload was an issue in other sports at Sloan. Marshall Faulk, the retired NFL running back, said: “A lot of my talents were used up in practices, not in games.” NFL teams have cut back on practices and rearranged schedules. NBA teams have been monitoring not only minutes, but distance run. You wonder what this means for the NHL and the morning skate. NHL teams have skipped more practices and morning skates over the past three seasons, because a lockout and an Olympics compressed schedules and a new labor agreement required more off days. But the morning skate remains a tradition. If we had better workload data, would it show a benefit or detriment to performance?

— Toronto Maple Leafs assistant GM Kyle Dubas talked about five different kinds of bias: confirmation, recency, information, sample-size and simplicity. He said recency bias could hurt the most before the trade deadline. “You’re in a discussion with another team,” Dubas said. “They say, ‘We want Player X from you.’ We say, ‘OK, what are you going to give us?’ And they say, ‘We’ll give you Prospect A, B, or C and a fourth-round pick.’ ” So the scouts rush to an AHL city, watch the prospects and report that A was OK, B was great and C was OK. “Immediately our discussion shifts to Prospect B,” Dubas said. “We’re eliminating hundreds of games that we’ve scouted and many data points that we have, and we’re putting it on one game on Feb. 23, 2015, when we’ve watched this player for four or five years.”

— Dubas is not saying there is no need to scout. Quite the opposite. He is saying there is no need to spend time and money getting to that one game, watching that one game, getting back from that one game and discussing that one game, when you can go back through video and reports to paint a more complete picture. “We have the ability to dig deeper,” Dubas said. “That’s the greatest thing this movement so far has generated. You have to go watch players. I think what analytics will do at least in hockey is create the need for more scouts and more people out there watching the game and more people generating reports on players. Everyone seems to think it’ll make it less. I think it’ll make it more. You’re going to want more views on more players at different levels and to add that to your video system and generate more data and information.”

— Several NHL teams attended Sloan. No one shared the specifics of what his team was doing, at least not publicly. But this might have been Brian Burke’s best criticism: “We think we have the best analytics guy in hockey in Chris Snow,” said Burke, the Calgary Flames’ president of hockey operations. “We just don’t talk about what we do. These teams that go to conferences and talk about what they do with their analytics, it doesn’t make any sense to me. You might as well show them your scouting reports, too.”

— Money was a huge factor leading up to the trade deadline, as teams retained money and took back contracts to facilitate deals. Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli raised an interesting point: Teams can retain money on only three contracts at a time, so some were reluctant to do so with an eye on the off-season and a looming salary-cap crunch. “They think because of where they feel the cap’s going to be, there might be players available where they can make deals,” Chiarelli said. “They want ultimately flexibility where they can get some players but they might have to retain salary on players going out. There’s a lot of teams near or at the cap that want teams to retain money.”

— The trade deadline is a roller coaster when you’re on the market. Erik Cole heard rumblings he might not play for the Dallas Stars on Sunday night with the deadline the next day. He asked coach Lindy Ruff if they were true, because if they were, he would skip his pregame routine and spend time with his son. “No,” Ruff told him, “you’re playing.” So Cole napped, went to the rink and started warming up. He was playing soccer in the hall when Ruff approached him. “I’m taking you off the power play,” Ruff said. Cole was stunned. Ruff was joking. “No,” Ruff said, “Jim wants to see you.” Cole went off to see GM Jim Nill, who was trading him to Detroit.

MORE NHL COVERAGE ON YAHOO SPORTS: