Dave Nonis is excited about the addition of assistant general manager Kyle Dubas to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ front office.
Appearing on Sportsnet 590 The Fan, the Leafs general manager said that the 28-year-old Dubas is hard working, humble, and fit exactly what the organization was looking for in terms of hockey analytics. “Of all the people we’ve talked to, we haven’t seen anyone that could actually do what we wanted (with analytics) until we sat down with Kyle (Dubas),” Nonis said Friday on Tim & Sid. “We had at least 15-to-20 different companies that came to us. A lot of it was interesting, but there were a lot of graphs that didn’t tell us anything. Kyle (Dubas) and his group were very different.”
Many have been critical of the general manager and the entire Maple Leafs organization for their failure to embrace the growing trend of advanced statistics, but Nonis quickly dismissed that notion. “People have talked about analytics now for a while,” Nonis said. “It’s kind of the buzzword. It’s not that we haven’t used those numbers because we have. It’s not brand new (to us).
“We’ve had programs that run a lot of the stats that people talk about. It’s not something we didn’t have or see. A lot of (the numbers) are looking backwards at what has (already) happened and this is the first opportunity for us to look forward. The (idea) that we haven’t looked at any of this in the past isn’t true.”
Nonis added that he spent a month with an NFL organization to learn more about they use metrics to make decisions. “We looked at when they cut players and how they make determinations on players going forward. That’s the type of thing we’d like to get to with our program. If you’re relying solely on numbers, that’s foolish. That’d be like watching a guy play two good games and making a decision based off that.”
He believes Dubas’ deep knowledge of advanced statistics will especially helpful to head coach Randy Carlyle, who many believe was reliant on an outdated coaching system that didn’t drive puck possession.
“I think Randy will be very open to anything we can bring him. He’ll look at anything that can help our team. “We brought him breakdowns (last year) and he’s been open to looking at that. This isn’t a guy who will put his hand up and not look at anything at all. We want to paint a picture of what we can do better or improve our lineup.”
The Leafs finished the 2013-14 season with two wins in their final 10 games and with a 38-36-8 record. The team had a goal differential of -25 and finished 12th in the Eastern Conference in regulation wins.