Chicago Blackhawks are banking on a season’s worth of analytics to aid their rebuild — but there are ‘no cheat codes’

Jarred Tinordi is old school when it comes to analytics.

“I’m a big fan of the eye test and a big fan of watching games,” the Chicago Blackhawks defenseman said.

But data can back up what his eyes tell him. “You can see trends that way,” Tinordi said. “Analytics have their place, too, for sure.”

A lot of teams rely on analytics, but the Hawks want to revolutionize the process and integrate it into a system coaches and scouts from the minors to the pros can access.

General manager Kyle Davidson hired former Cubs executive Jeff Greenberg as associate general manager in April 2022 with the idea he would borrow tools and practices from different sports to give the Hawks an edge.

But you can’t just throw a lot of numbers and stats at them. The Hawks are trying to boil down a mountain of data into the right intelligence.

Coach Luke Richardson said Greenberg and his staff have been working on an app to check on prospects, including analytics and stats: “It’ll be right on our phones and computers and it’ll be great.”

But it’s Year 1 of building a new system, and much of Greenberg’s hockey strategy and analytics department should have an “under construction” sign on it. Greenberg emphasized the “importance of really building that foundation early and not rushing things, not just checking boxes and cutting corners; taking that longer-term approach.”

“We hired a few really talented developers early, we hired a couple really talented data scientists early to start making sense of the information we were putting together,” he told the Tribune. “Once you have that you can start driving things in different directions: scouting, development, coaching, etc.

“The teams that have done this stuff well, not just in hockey but in other sports like baseball, that’s an essential step.”

But steps don’t lead to a finish line. It’s a constantly evolving process.

“There are no cheat codes, there are no secret formulas,” Greenberg said. “It’s finding ways to gain edges and build off those things over time.

“And it’s deliberate. If you can be patient and maintain that long-term outlook, you’ve got a chance to add something that can help.”

That’s not to say the Hawks haven’t incorporated any new data.

One of the first requests Richardson made was to study turnovers at both blue lines: how it affects their offensive zone time and how often they turn into Grade-A chances for opponents.

“Luke has been a great resource in terms of what are our coaches looking for,” Greenberg said. “How have they seen it done in the past? What are the things we can look to replicate or maybe improve upon, expand upon what’s worked, what hasn’t worked?”

Case in point, Richardson also talked with Greenberg about a few areas the Montreal Canadiens studied when Richardson was an assistant coach there.

“In our Stanley Cup run in Montreal (in 2021), we kept tabs on certain things in certain areas,” Richardson said. “I showed him the sheet and percentages where the team should be — above 75%, 80% in certain categories — and when you put them all together, it really went together well with how well we did.”

The Canadiens finished as runners-up to the Tampa Bay Lightning that season.

One such area Richardson wants to adopt is “hard action,” a term coined by fellow Canadiens assistant Alex Burrows.

“Hard action, it’s a lot of the intangibles in a game,” Richardson said. “It’s a lot of things you’re supposed to do in your job, but are you going to do it with authority and hard action?

“Doesn’t mean (you) run a guy over at center ice. Even a guy like (Lukas) Reichel — a lighter player but has a strong stick — can he get there quick and as the guy’s turning, go hard through his hands, steal a puck and go? That’s a hard action.

“Or if a player turns away from the puck and it stays in, “that’s a minus on a hard action. So you keep track of that.”

Calgary Flames forward Nazem Kadri provided a prime example of “minus hard action” Tuesday when he rimmed a soft pass behind the net that Hawks forward Boris Katchouk easily picked off and set up Jujhar Khaira for a first-period goal.

That one gaffe loomed large in the Hawks’ 4-3 upset and could be the moment fans remember if the Flames miss the playoffs.

Richardson noted Canadiens coaches used hard action to validate points they were trying to make.

“Usually you have it marked on the computer, so if someone questions (it), we had a bit of fun with it with the players,” he said. “Like Corey Perry, he would come in and say, ‘I don’t think I had a missed hard action, show me.’ So you’d pull up the video, it’s marked, and there’s a bit of an argument and a debate and you have some fun with it.”

The technology doesn’t just apply to the game. Earlier this season, defenseman Connor Murphy explained the purpose of some devices sitting next to him in the locker room.

“They track, like, our speed and heart rates, like bands that can tell your quickness on the ice, how much you travel,” he said. “Kind of like a Fitbit.”

Defenseman Caleb Jones’ attitude toward analytics probably fits somewhere on the spectrum between Murphy and Tinordi.

“In the summer, we don’t have any of that where me and (brother) Seth train with a guy,” Jones said. ”But I know (the Hawks) have a little chip in our shoulder pads that will track maybe how hard a practice was or how hard a game is, so they can track what they call your ‘load’ was that day.

“Then that determines maybe how hard the next day needs to be, or if they need to tone it back because guys get fatigued. So it’s just another good tool to manage fatigue and recovery.”

Greenberg didn’t want to go into detail about what tools and analytics the Hawks are developing but did say they’re looking at new ways to use the puck and player-tracking technology the NHL launched in 2020.

“That’s one of those areas where a lot of the information in that space we’re still trying to figure out what exactly it’s telling us, how we can use it most effectively,” he said.

“That ties back to trying to really build these foundational things. The tracking data — in particular the in-game data — those are pretty massive data sets. It just takes a lot of time and resources to really wrap your arms around it.”