Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - July 29, 2024, Winnipeg, Manitoba C2 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM T HERE are no musical acts performing, no food trucks or mosh pits to be found and no merchandise for sale. For those reasons alone, this particular seasonal gathering doesn’t quite pack the same punch that so many others around Manitoba do this time of year. But make no mistake: The first-ever “summer coaching summit” that begins today is an important one to a Winnipeg Jets organization hoping to hit all the right notes when the cur- tain rises on a new season in the fall. Taking centre stage will be new head coach Scott Arniel, who has put together the itinerary for Hockeyp- alooza 2024. “There’s lots on the schedule. We’ve got 19 or 20 bullet points,” he told the Free Press of the four-day event, which runs through Thursday. The list includes integrating a pair of new assistant coaches — Dean Chynoweth and Davis Payne — into the systems and structure of a squad that went 52-24-6 last season, finishing fourth-overall in the NHL standings and leading the league in fewest goals against. Those two men will work with Arniel, who takes over from the retired Rick Bowness, and returning assistants Marty Johnston and Wade Flaherty. “There will be some teaching. With Dean and Davis, we’ve got to get them up to speed on how we go about our business. Marty and I have been doing lots of prep work to get that started,” said Arniel. Scheduling, training camp plans, media relations, video usage and all-important special teams — which was a significant sore spot for the Jets last year — are other hot topics. “I want some of their opinions and some of their thoughts on how they did it in other organizations,” Arniel said of the newcomers. “The other side is that both of them are going to have a big part in the speciality teams. I’ve mentioned how much it is important to me and our team that those areas get better. So that will be a big emphasis, as well.” Staff from the Manitoba Moose will also be in attendance, with the idea of ensuring both the big club and the farm team are on the same page. One of the primary focal points during the summit will be analytics, which Arniel said at his introductory news conference in May will take on a greater role under his watch. “There’s a gazillion different statis - tics out there that can make you look good, make you look bad, things that you can use, things that are overkill,” he said. “So, what we’re trying to do is funnel it to our coaching staff, so we can determine, ‘OK, what is it that we want? What do you guys want, what do you guys (in the analytics department) have?’” Arniel explained. “We make that a little bit smaller and the stuff that gets to the players has to be even more fine-tuned, be- cause players have a lot going on and we don’t want to overkill them in that department. But if there are things we can feed to them, that’s where we’re planning on going.” The move is being applauded by external experts in the field, who believe the Jets have been lagging behind some of their competition when it comes to the so-called fancy stats game. “It would certainly seem like the Jets haven’t used analytics fully to their capacity. Especially compared to teams that are all-in on analytics, like Colorado, Florida and Carolina,” said Byron Bader, the Calgary-born creator of Hockey Prospecting, a data-driven player comparison and drafting tool. His mention of Colorado is notewor- thy, since the Avalanche just faced the Jets in the first round of the playoffs last spring, dropping the first game be- fore winning the next four. Following that series, the Denver Post ran a story on how the club used analytics as “the secret sauce” to make adjustments on the fly to overwhelm Winnipeg. Avalanche defenceman Jack John- son, an 18-year veteran, described it this way to the Post when explaining how analytics helped them beat the Jets. “I think it’s super useful for us. (Coaches) break it down and simplify it. I think it puts it into a perspective for the players that takes away any opinion or emotion, because numbers are unemotional,” he said. For the second consecutive post-sea- son, Rick Bowness was unable to launch his own counter-punch and his group was quickly ushered into the golf season. “This is a great example of using analytics in real time to make ad- justments to swing the game in your favour,” Bader said. “Although it was a small game sample, they have millions of pieces of data from every puck touch over the past five or 10 years. “So you can glean from the data that Winnipeg played X way in Game 1 and, based on hundreds of games historical- ly where teams maybe played similar, if we react with Y then this can be how we counteract how they beat us in Game 1. “The Avs obviously picked up on something and never looked back.” Vegas did the same thing in 2023, dropping the opener to the Jets before winning four straight. Was this a case of an old-school coach like Bowness disregarding the data that was coming his way in favour of the so-called “eye test?” Some will draw that conclusion, especially with Arniel now leaning into the subject. “Making sure everybody’s on the same page, making sure they’re all using the same stats and when they speak to one another, making sure they’re all talking in a common language to one another,” said Mi- cah Blake McCurdy, a Halifax-based mathematician who has done consult- ing work with five NHL clubs in the past and now runs HockeyViz, another data-fuelled website. “That’s a lot of organizational infra- structure work. If you don’t actually have all the people on the same page, you can have the smartest people you like doing tremendous work and it goes for nothing.” For those reasons, how coaches and players use the data is also important. Bader said some of Winnipeg’s brightest offensive stars and biggest minute-munchers — Mark Scheifele and Kyle Connor up front and Neal Pionk on the blue line — are some of the biggest culprits when it comes to the defensive side. That means caution is often needed when it comes to their deployment. “They have an all-world goalie in Connor Hellebuyck that can cover up a lot of mistakes,” said Bader. “Teams that are, perhaps, more engaged on the analytics side may use those types of players more strategically.” McCurdy said the usage now extends well beyond things such as individual matchups within a game to areas including contract negotiations. Analytics are regularly brought up at arbitration hearings and free-agent signings. Simply relying on instinct and experience in a numbers game is a recipe for disaster. “It’s going to have a certain amount of blind spots,” he said. “So one of the things you can do, if you have a disciplined process, is you can find the most severe errors that your instinct might lead you into, because it’s the precisely the kind of thing you’re not going to see coming, because you’re not weighing all factors or you’re using your gut.” Winnipeg’s analytics department is largely an anonymous, behind-the- scenes group — that’s how teams pre - fer it — but its role will likely take on an increased importance with Arniel now at the helm. “Analytics and data analysis aren’t going anywhere. It’s becoming more and more prominent,” Bader said. “The motto in nearly any industry right now, not just sports, is, ‘the more data the better.’ “So while they’re, perhaps, a bit later to the game in terms of what they have set up analytically and how they’re using it, you’ve gotta join the fold at some point. All the best teams that are winning currently are heavily focused on analytics.” mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca X: @mikemcintyrewpg ken.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca X: @WiebesWorld SPORTS MONDAY, JULY 29, 2024 MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Jets head coach Scott Arniel says the organization’s first summer coaching summit will be a busy four days, with an emphasis on analytics and special teams. New Jets bench boss Scott Arniel convening summer coaching camp for staff this week, and greater emphasis on data-driven analytics is high on the agenda MIKE MCINTYRE AND KEN WIEBE STRENGTH in NUMBERS FRED GREENSLADE / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES The Colorado Avalanche are credited with using analytics to make adjustments on the fly to bury the Jets in the first round of the playoffs. Giants down Sultans to force deciding game for MJBL championship IT’S only right that the biggest series of the year, played by the two best teams, goes the distance. The Elmwood Giants and Carillon Sultans have traded punches through- out the Manitoba Junior Baseball League championship and one will de- liver the knockout blow in the winner- take-all Game 5 at A.D. Penner Park in Steinbach tonight at 6 p.m. Facing the prospects of a loss in finals for the second year in a row, the Giants extended the best-of-five series with a 4-1 triumph in Game 4 at Koskie Field on Sunday. “That was big. That was one of my biggest games ever, in 15 years,” said Giants head coach Ed Kulyk. “I made a lineup and those nine went out and Colson Smith pitched an amazing game and Bennett Freiter behind the dish called an amazing game. Dylan Duguay with a big home run. “Our seniors have been there. There’s no panic in the dugout and one error, one base hit, can turn the game around and it showed today. A couple of base hits and great defence and here we are.” The Sultans ended the regular season as the league’s top team with a 24-6 record and the Giants were a close second at 23-8. Carillon is seeking its first MJBL title in 12 years while the Giants look to return to the top of the mountain for the sixth time in the last seven years. After winning Game 1 in Steinbach 6-5, the Giants dropped consecutive games by a combined score of 23-11. The Sultans’ bats had overwhelmed through most of the series, but Smith had other plans on this day as he pitched 5.1 rock-solid innings on the strength of six strikeouts while con- ceding just one run. “We had one job to do, we had to bring it back to Carillon on Monday,” said Smith, who was pulled from the game once he reached 115 pitches due to the MJBL’s pitching rules. “That’s a great hitting team, right? So, obviously, I was trying to shut them down but then there’s times I was pitching for contact to get it in play. Put all your heart in defence, you got that defence behind you, that’s who you trust the most.” Carillon responded with their top pitcher Linden Meilleur, whose per- formance would’ve been enough for a win on many days. Meilleur’s final line will say he allowed four earned runs but that certainly doesn’t describe how well he tossed in six innings of work, which included six strikeouts. The Giants led the entire game and it started with some great team play in the third inning. After a leadoff double from Daniel Tokariwski, Brett Lucko laid down a perfect bunt to advance the runner and reach base himself. Two batters later, Riley Craw lifted a sacrifice fly to centre field that scored Tokariwski. Duguay doubled the lead for the hosts in the next frame with a solo shot over the wall in left field. The Sultans drew to within one in the fifth inning after a hard-hit ground ball from Luc Lagasse was mishandled by Elmwood and scored Michel Na- deau, who was pinch-running for Cody Gunderson. It was the closest Carillon would get. The Giants added some insurance runs in the sixth inning as an errant throw to third base allowed Freiter to score from second. Nixon Carriere tripled on the next at-bat and was later brought home on a lined single by Josh Johnson. All said and done, it was a gritty performance in a crucial spot from Elmwood. Their backs will be against the wall one more time, in what figures to be a raucous environment. “It’s a baseball game,” said Kulyk. “I told the guys in our debrief, ‘Leave it all out on the field. If you can tell your- self win or lose tomorrow that (you) gave it all (you) got, that’s all I ask.’ “They’re young men growing up and maturing and it’s exciting and fun. Looking forward to it tomorrow.” joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca X: @jfreysam ELMWOOD 4 CARILLON 1 JOSHUA FREY-SAM ;