Report: Senators Make Sean Tierney First Full-Time Analytics Hire

Welcome to the Ottawa Senators, Sean Tierney.

After 30 seasons without one, the Senators have made their first full-time analytics hire.

TSN 1200’s John Rodenberg announced via Twitter X tonight that Tierney will be joining the organization. Somebody let Shayna Goldman know to update her organizational analytics hires visual.

That’s a great scoop by Tierney has some deeper Ottawa roots. He attended Carleton University where he got a Master’s degree before completing a teaching degree at the University of Ottawa.

Tierney was the senior director of analytics and pro service at Sportlogiq. There he would have developed some familiarity working with the Senators as he was the main point of contact between the service provider and professional teams in regards to accessing their hockey services, reports, and statistics. Tierney also has a connection to the Senators’ new owner. He previously worked for Michael Andlauer’s Hamilton Bulldogs as their director of analytics.

I first met Sean at one of the annual Ottawa Hockey Analytics Conferences. One of the immediate things that stood out is that he’s an articulate and personable individual.

I would eventually interview Tierney as part of a deep dive for The Athletic that explored the number of analysts and hockey analytics website developers who have some connection to Ottawa.

“The incredible CapGeek was my initial hook into a world beyond the box scores,” Tierney said. “I started digging through Matthew Wuest’s incredible site and realized that a lot of work was going on in non-mainstream places.”

“I joined Fansided with the intention of writing as an outlet for my passion and interest in the sport and began trying to share Corsi info and other such stats to give my articles a different perspective.”

Now 34 years old, Tierney’s written work has appeared on a variety of platforms. He has carved out an excellent niche by sharing his interactive hockey charts and tools through his Tableau website and his Twitter account (@ChartingHockey). This work and promotion helped him land a regular spot on TSN Hockey Analytics this year.

Whether they grew up as fans of the Senators or spent time in the nation’s capital, a disproportionate number of individuals who were responsible for spurring the hockey analytics movement have a link to Ottawa. I have long argued that it was one significant component that the Senators have inexplicably failed to leverage.

One of his best qualities is that he is adept at taking complicated data and ideas and presenting them in ways that are easy to understand. This ability stood out in the public sphere at ChartingHockey.ca.

Having the unique ability to explain not just what the numbers are, but why they are happening will be paramount in influencing more informed decisions. Whether they are tactical coaching decisions, better player personnel decisions or identifying which external players to target and avoid, the goal for the Senators is to optimize their decision-making process and ideally, mitigate as many mistakes as they can.

If there has been one consistent shortcoming of the Senators and the Dorion era, it has been this willingness to roll the dice and overpay — in terms of money, term, and opportunity costs — some questionable acquisitions. I’m not going to use this space right now to go down the rabbit hole of Dorion’s mistakes, but many of them never required the benefit of hindsight to question.

One of the things that stands out in analyzing Dorion’s tenure is that many are willing to forgive his missteps — displacing the blame on a mercurial owner or the lack of capital and resources to finance a credible supporting staff. They are reasonable points to make, but honestly, they often felt reductive and took too much responsibility away from the general manager.

With the hiring of Tierney, we are finally having that shift away from the smaller front office that we are accustomed to. And, over the course of the next few weeks, it will be interesting to see what other moves are made to round out the staff. Daniel Alfredsson is just one name that has been circulating the rumour mill since the team was formally put up for sale.

I do wonder whether his appointment was at the direction of Andlauer or whether this hire was a decision made by Dorion. Given the team’s relationship as a customer of Sportlogiq, it does seem reasonably possible that Dorion could have headhunted Tierney himself, but with Tierney’s history with Andlauer, maybe Dorion was not given much of a choice.

This dynamic between the owner and general manager will be one of the more intriguing storylines to follow as the season progresses. The easiest assumption to make is that Dorion will not have a ton of rope to work with because he’s not Andlauer’s guy. Former Hamilton Bulldogs general manager Steve Staios is the name that keeps getting linked to the Senators, but it remains to be seen what will happen once Andlauer finally takes over.

The significance of the Tierney hiring is important, however. It is the first real injection of capital into a front office that desperately needs it and by insulating the general manager with more diverse skills and opinions, it can hopefully only lead to more fleshed-out hockey discussions and decisions.

Today’s news is diametrically opposed to how it was run under the previous owner who refused to invest in analytics because they never worked for him in horse racing. To see Andlauer immediately invest money in this discipline is a welcomed change worthy of celebration.

Other News and Notes:

• In Corey Pronman’s annual rankings of the organizations with the best 22 and under talent, he listed the Senators as having the league’s seventh-best collection of talent. The organization was rated as his fifth-best in 2022, but the graduation of Brady Tkachuk explains the modest drop.

• Sticking with The Athletic, Scott Wheeler explained that he was wrong about his amateur scouting assessment of Senators defenceman Tyler Kleven.

• According to an Instagram post by Napolis Cafe in Stittsville, Craig Anderson will reportedly be retiring as a member of the Ottawa Senators.

• Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch reported that Michael Andlauer has been approved by the NHL’s executive committee to buy the Senators. The next step is to receive approval from the league’s Board of Governors before formally being announced as the new owner. He is expected to get full control of the team in early September.