Did the Senators do that thing?
In a summer that has already brought the organization Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux, have the Senators also made a low-key front office addition that could also pay significant dividends down the road?
That’s the question I’m wondering after Josh Weissbock announced on Twitter today that he was leaving Colorado for the nation’s capital.
For those unaware, Weissbock studied Computer Science, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing at the University of Ottawa, where he earned a master’s degree in 2014. During his time in the nation’s capital, Weissbock’s background and interest in hockey led him to delve into hockey analytics.
While sites like War-On-Ice and Extra Skater’s were prominent during that era, Weissbock focused on analytics in an area where nobody else was working — amateur prospect analysis.
Weissbock began cataloging Canadian Hockey League statistical data to drive team and individual-based metrics that present larger snapshots of a team or player’s talent. At the individual level, Weissbock’s database — which can still be accessed via the ‘Wayback Machine’ internet archive tool — had emerging statistics like NHLe to help give a sense of how players rated on their numbers without any attached qualitative scouting bias.
NHLe is an equivalency formula designed “to give us an idea of how a player would perform at the NHL level using counting numbers (points).”
After running CHLStats.com, Weissbock would go on to join the CanucksArmy blog where he worked with Cam Lawrence to create and develop the ‘Prospect Cohort Success (PCS)’ model.
“The idea behind PCS is that you can take a player and generate a list of comparable players (aka: “cohorts”). Knowing these comparable players, we can look at their success in other leagues beyond junior to estimate the likelihood of a current prospect becoming an NHLer, and what kind of player they could become.”
The Florida Panthers would eventually hire Lawrence and Weissbock as an amateur prospect consultant and a prospect consulting specialist respectively in June of 2016. Five years later, both Lawrence and Weissbock did not have their contracts renewed.
The two would latch on with the Columbus Blue Jackets shortly thereafter.
Interestingly, Columbus’ prospect pool has coincidentally rocketed up the organizational prospect rankings after their past two drafts.
Now, there is no official confirmation that Weissbock has joined the Senators’ front office, but if he has, then this offseason is essentially just ticking off all the boxes of things that fans have been clamoring for.
After years of seeing the rest of the hockey world accept and embrace the analytics movement by ramping up their front office staffing, the Senators fell behind the eight ball relying on more traditional means.
Recent years have seen the Senators become a client purchasing third-party analytics data from SportsLogiq. Without any full-time staff dedicated to parsing through the data, the concern was always that the organization would use confirmation bias targeting the data it liked to reinforce its decisions or strategies on and off the ice.
Hopefully, there will be some clarity forthcoming on what Weissbock is doing returning to Ottawa, but if he is in fact joining the Senators, it will just be another strong move in what is quickly becoming a transcendent offseason for the franchise.
Great work Graeme!
The email version has a typo, "Alexandre Giroux" just letting you know.
Great article. I hadn’t seen word of this elsewhere. This is amazing news and long term this could have a huge impact