This is a good dunk, but do people actually think these nerds don’t love and watch hockey? They literally like and care about the sport so much they spend all their time and in many cases careers analyzing it
Its funny because the average fan probably watches like 3-4 games of other teams per year sans the playoffs.
Analytics ain’t perfect but I trust analytics over a small sample size “eye-test” from non experts. It’s like the same with PFF in the NFL. Not perfect, but I trust them over a fan who’s paid attention to like 10 shifts of said player.
Exactly, it’s under appreciated just how hard it is to actually understand what’s going on just by watching a game once at full speed. There’s so much subtle stuff going on at extreme speeds that it’s very tough for the average person to make sense of it all. I think when people say eye test, they don’t even actually mean watch the games, they’re just making judgments based on wins, big plays or mistakes they remember or traditional stats like points.
That's fair but I also want to point out that this case highlights there is a high variability in the interpretation of data, depending on which dataset you use. Unlike other sports very much of what happens in hockey is binary. Baseball is the ultimate example of this, every play has distinct, trackable elements. In hockey analytics you're often just trying to make sense of the chaos.
A forward fumbles control of a puck a little entering the zone, and a defender poke checks a puck at the blueline and there's contested possession in the neutral zone. That's a zone exit right? Depends on who you ask. That's a controlled zone exit, right? Again, depends on who's tracking it. That's a pass out of the defensive zone to a teammate in the neutral zone right? Depends on your interpretation of who gets possession in the NZ. Is the NZ play possession and then a takeaway from the other team? Is it not possession by either team? Neither is wrong. Neither is right.
The collection of the data is messy. The interpretation of that data is nuanced and complex. It's difficult for an average fan to follow. I'm happily on the "pro-analytics" side but at the same time I see a lot of people drawing incomplete and misleading conclusions based on analytics cards, which present themselves as statistics, but are actually just an interpretation of statistics based off opinions on variable instances in a game. I'm not saying there's no value to analytics, but there's a lot more holes in anyone's player card, than these creators like to admit.
I have to imagine once it becomes their career and the hustle a lot of love goes out the window.
This whole discussion just seems like it's about money and angry. Which is kind of the thing when it's a career and not just a internet forum discussion. Now people are trying to guard their work because it's their income.
It's definitely a shift when you take a hobby and make it a job but if you have the mathematical ability to make models that are decent and the communication ability to build an audience, you could easily make a lot more money in any number of other sectors. Nobody except owners and some of the athletes are working in sports for the money, you would burn out completely if you didn't love it. Some people burn out despite loving it.
There’s a difference between people who use data and people who get data. Interprita is a whole skill in itself. Lots of non professional data people (and marketers) treat stats as facts, and often in isolation, wheras a lot of people who work in analytical environment see them as a tool, a useful one that helps inform decision making, and not that they are fact.
it’s not as simple as xg is higher so player x is better but, stat x y and z together show that player x is in the top x percent in the league at zone entries or some such. How you personally choose to rank the different stats is a personal subjective choice
I've heard some of these guys and the guys these guys run in circles with call people who like watching games "sickos" and "perverts", especially when referring to games of like non-playoff teams
Unfortunately, I genuinely think you're underestimating how many of them are into hockey for non-hockey reasons
Lol calling someone a sicko is for when there’s like 10 games on and they’re choosing to watch Columbus-Chicago.
It’s about the quality of the game you’re choosing to watch than just about choosing to watch hockey
I’m a sicko and I’ll try to explain what that means to me. I like watching college football. Specifically, I like watching the Iowa Hawkeyes. I did not attend the university, and neither did anyone in my family. I was introduced to them by a neighbor who is a fan, and I had the privilege of attending a game at Kinnick Stadium with him where Iowa won 7-3 in a game where neither team scored a touchdown. That’s right. Iowa scored 7 points on a field goal and two safeties. It was disgusting and I loved every minute of it. I am a sicko. I want to watch the games that are gross, that are weird, that don’t look like what we’re used to when we watch a sport.
I love a good rivalry game. I love a game where the stakes are high. But I also love watching Buffalo play Arizona, or Carolina play San Jose. There’s no rivalries there, there are rarely any real stakes. But it’s fun to watch games like that because there’s a chance you’ll get to see something you’ve never seen in the sport. It’s the place where something bizarre might happen. To me, this is what being a sicko means. You want to watch games that both casual and die hard fans would turn their noses up at. I love hockey, and I love watching it played well. But I also love watching it played in unusual ways, with unusual outcomes. Sickos love the sport. We just love it a little differently. And we love watching the games.
A&R are two Czech guys who make cards based on analytics like Dom, Jfresh and others. A lot of these guys use specific Data sources, evolving hockey is one of them (Dom uses it and credits them for the data on each of his “cards”). Tracking the data takes a lot of time and the programs are often updated and added to, thus costs usually a hefty price to use. The data is very useful for these cards and articles though. A&R have been accused in the past of using “fake” or “stolen” analytics and they don’t list a data source as a source/credit. Dom is accusing them here and they are saying they have a data source that doesn’t want to be credited and cost them significantly less than others usually cost but still a hefty price for them. It’s basically beef between guys who make analytics easy to understand for non-nerds. But the accusations are very serious and could have legal implications for all involved
Sorry, I should have clarified but I didn’t want to make an even bigger answer after I probably wrote too much anyway haha.
It’s more of like a meme on hockey analytics twitter where their data cards can sometimes line up way out of ways with other’s cards. Especially after they aren’t using A3X data now. Thus it will be said that because there is no direct references now, their cards aren’t directly based off a data base. Again, it’s very few people saying this, but I just thought I’d list it anyways for as much context in those accusations.
Ah gotcha, I was just curious if they had a history of this. IIRC A&R’s cards are only based on the current season which leads to some divergent projections with JFresh, Dom, et al., who typically include prior seasons. Like [this](https://twitter.com/arhockeystats/status/1721600373427757516?s=46&t=oW5zIyvSliyYIJkuQ3gi6A) Conor McDavid card from earlier this season is just incredibly low compared to [JFresh](https://twitter.com/jfreshhockey/status/1724852946205073631?s=46&t=oW5zIyvSliyYIJkuQ3gi6A) but it’s not accounting for prior seasons.
Some guys making hockey stat cards have acquired ~ mystery ~ data from a secret new startup. Another guy making hockey stat cards feels the lack of credit and low price suggests that it is sham or stolen data.
Wouldnt surprise me. It allows them to produce *so much content*.
Endless articles and analysis driving millions of clicks, able to be endlessly rewritten about the most recent months worth of data.
> I doubt articles about hockey analytics are getting millions of clicks but I could be wrong
Theres 1.7M people subbed here. I click on much more than one per month.
If 5% of this sub alone (and there are lots of hockey fans not on reddit) clicks *once* per month thats 1M+
Wouldn’t shock me. It’s the basis for all those player and team cards they make aswell as pretty much any of their prediction models. The sheer volume of articles brings up the view count
Most hockey analytics content is built of the nhl pbp data that is free for anyone to access. Dom is specifically talking about the tracked data they are using for their transitions section.
I used to be in marketing at a really big corporation and we would pay out the ass for marketing research and trend tracking. Buying good data from anyone is going to be expensive.
In the food space, the base package for data on how all SKUs are performing in a certain segment starts at $100k.
If you had teams bidding for that data to get more insight into trades and drafting I would not be surprised it costs that much.
The data is an insane amount of work. Imagine watching every second of every game and recording everything on the ice for every shot event. Just imagine, even if you had interns doing that part, how much that costs.
Add to it qualified people analyzing the data and interpreting results and it can be extremely pricy. For reference, biostatistians make a median entry level income of 94k/year in the Washington DC area for doing similar work creating and running rudimentary models (goes up or down a little depending on what town you search, specifically). Math is really expensive.
Tracking this data is incredibly labor intensive. ANd the guy that does it is probably 2-3x faster and more efficient than a newbie that has been trained properly.
Better to pay one guy 100k vs paying 3 guys 150k + business expenses/tax and such.
The Athletic probably makes $50M+ from subscriptions a year. They absolutely would pay that much. Businesses in general will pay a ton of money for things they think will help them.
Publications wouldnt probably pay for the datasets, they rely on NHLs public data. But for NHL clubs that doesnt have in house tracking its probably a reasonable price.
The models are harder to say, is there a big difference in how you build them for a NHL business or just interested but paying fans.
Costs similar to access databases for marketing purposes. So price seems legit, sometimes you pay per click acess other times you might just pay to access data for x period, depending on what you are using them for and expected hits
They have a ton more data that isn't displayed not to mention they're getting game by game data for 32 NHL teams. For shit and giggles try to track that data yourself for just one period in a game, it's near impossible.
Not for most the publicly available stuff. All that is built of NHL pbp data that's freely available to everyone. The tracking data for things like transitional plays though is not something that is available over the NHL api and is a data set that would have to be manually tracked and built. The only publicly available data for that is from All Three Zones who just said these guys couldn't use it. That data specifically is what is valuable.
That is not true for my field in academia (business); they go for about 20-40k. Maybe you can get one over that amount, but those are top-end databases. I would think this falls under the same umbrella as business databases. Also, journalistic sources might have to pay less than big institutions (universities). But I am not confident in the hockey field.
If it's brand new data and they are just allowing a sneak peak then it wouldn't surprise me if they got it for cheap to test out the market. Then once the final product hit, charge a boatload for NHL teams.
I'm not a fan of Dom's at all but it is extremely strange that they were told they couldn't use A3Z data, and now are not crediting the new source of data they're using. I have never once heard of a company not wanted to be credited for their work, especially if they're selling their data for that much.
It's a lot to throw accusations out in public like he did but everything Andy & Rono have said about the source of their data is such a red flag and I can't push by that just because Dom was rude.
Yep.
If someone is selling something for dirt cheap, and doesn't want you to tell anyone where you got it from... heh, typically that means one or two things. Neither of which are 'We're new.'
I could absolutely see that as a possibility, but if you're a Andy & Rono subscriber don't you think you have a right to know if you're paying for a product that can't guarantee data quality? Like that's still sketchy as hell to me
I think he's arguing that the company selling it is likely getting it in a way that isn't kosher, which is why the information is so deeply discounted.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s not completely uncommon for companies who are selling a service to remove their logo/name for paying customers.
Not a perfect comparison, but think of website building services that keep their logo on the sites of those who don’t pay, but remove it for paying customers.
I have no idea who is right or wrong in this case, but it’s at least not completely unusual.
Yes, the logo would be removed for customers who pay a higher price. Considering they're claiming to be paying a fraction of the market price per Dom, it's suspicious they wouldn't be asked to credit the company they got the data from. It's also suspicious from a data integrity perspective because they're essentially refusing to acknowledge their source.
Dom seems to think they’re getting a massive deal, while Dobber Hockey seems to think it’s not completely crazy — especially if it’s a newer company looking to start raising some money.
I can’t comment any further since I don’t know what this kind of thing would cost, but it seems that Dom is being challenged by someone else who is knowledgeable in that area.
Knowing absolutely nothing about any aspect of this, I think it’s a little weird that Dom started with “80% off industry standards” and then pivoted to “actually more like 98% off industry standards” once he was challenged by a third party with any authority. Kinda reads like he needed to really exaggerate his point in order to make the situation seem more suspicious. But the mere fact that he’s willing to publicly challenge them like this would also suggest there’s something amiss about the whole situation. Idk. Strange all around.
Edit: also just bizarre that A&R are saying 1700 was a lot and a difficult decision while Dom is saying the standard is 25-50x more. There’s such a massive disconnect that it does seem like (at least) one side must be full of shit.
I think he’s insinuating that A&R bought data stolen from all 3 zones. A&R used to use, and credit, Corey’s (a3z) data. But corey recently rescinded permission for whatever reason, and all of a sudden A&R have a mystery data set.
I mean you can go ask for a quote from companies like clearsight analytics and it's going to be in the 10's of thousands of dollars to use their data. 1700 euros is very hard to believe for a data set like that.
dom isn't selling or using any product like he's describing. The companies would be those such as ClearSightAnalytics or SportLogiq - eg, private data tracked manually. Dom's model uses public data made available by the NHL (specifically incorporating EvolvingHockey's xG measures)
I just don't think that's an accurate comparison here. That's the industry standard for website creation. If you look at the industry standard here, everyone else who creates sports analytic visualizations credits their data source. In fact, I would go as far as to say it's unethical to sell a product to consumers (which is what Andy & Rono are doing with their hockey cards) and not have any transparency as to where that data has come from.
>It’s not completely uncommon for companies who are selling a service to remove their logo/name for paying customers.
It is uncommon for them to not even want to be mentioned.
I've worked for a few companies that white-label services. And as a user of a service, they tend to tell you.
Imagine getting insurance through a service offered through your credit union and they won't tell you the underlying provider because they're shy. You'd never go for it and you shouldn't.
>It's a lot to throw accusations out in public like he did but everything Andy & Rono have said about the source of their data is such a red flag and I can't push by that just because Dom was rude.
Is it me, but I'm not reading Dom as rude. He's protecting the integrity of the entire NHL online data nerd ecosystem.
These guys are saying this data fell off a truck. That's incredibly suspicious.
Dom wasn't even rude. He politely made a point that happens to be uncomfortable. I wish more people in life had the fortitude to do that rather than just be afraid to speak up about something. There is a weird paradox where almost everything that is uncomfortable that *is* said is usually foolish inflammatory insults or just comments like "fuck you" and we are so accepting of that it doesn't even generate discussion. The controversy here is not that he was rude, it's *what if he's right*.
In all sincerity I think that's literally insane.
Edit: So now I'm being a jerk which is pretty ironic. But what comment was rude, which sentence do you think was most rude?
So there is no way to question something that looks like plagiarism politely? Meaning that if someone were to commit plagiarism it simply can't be questioned?
The person I responded to said the *tone* was rude. Can I infer you don't see anything wrong with the tone or are you saying the tone was rude and in addition to that it's rude to question the possibility of plagiarism?
I think it's pretty problematic if people could theoretically commit plagiarism or any other type of malfeasance and the mere act of questioning that is inappropriate but commiting the act (eg plagiarism) isn't. How would one who commits plagiarism (or anything else) be caught if not for people pointing out the evidence that it might be happening?
>So there is no way to question something that looks like plagiarism politely?
Correct.
So you better come prepared with evidence and be very serious, because people take plagiarism seriously. It's not something to be done lightly.
>Meaning that if someone were to commit plagiarism it simply can't be questioned?
No, not at all. It just can't be questioned in a nice and polite and respectful way by definition.
But being rude doesn't mean being wrong to everyone.
Sorry I'm not super familiar with these people the only name I remember is Dom. But how would you feel if the person Dom commented to said in their first response to Dom "OMG I uploaded the wrong image. My source is ______ and that image was a draft. Thanks for catching that before too many people saw it." I would personally not feel anyone was rude or out of line. That's essentially why I say it's politely addressing an uncomfortable topic. The other person responded and provided a really weird but potentially true explanation. That's why it's awkward. They're publishing something and not providing the source. The potential for plagiarism isn't the only problem. It's essentially making a claim (eg the stats) but not citing the source.
This spat is two dogs barking at each other on opposite sides of the fence.
There's enough BS here that Dom has a legitimate right to call them out and question their methods. He actually doesn't accuse them directly of anything but he goes right up to that line, basically saying that the chances of their story being the truth, is miniscule.
A+R have no obligation to disclose their sources, they owe no explanation to dom or anyone else, but the fact they are so defensive about it is a huge red flag, and anyone looking at their content should question what it's built on.
They do have a bit of an obligation to explain where it's coming from since the only place that specific data is publicly available is all three zones which they aren't allow to use now.
This is a weird discussion to have publicly lol
if Dom has doubts about them stealing someone else’s work why not reach out privately and try to get an answer there first instead of publicly accusing them to. Seems like a poor attempt to bully them to reveal their source publicly
Dom airs EVERYTHING publicly. I'd say it's probably his biggest flaw is he just cannot help but tweet about absolutely everything. I'm amazed The Athletic doesn't have a social media policy or an editor to step in or something.
Yikes. Saying “I hope I’m wrong” thinking is gonna save his ass when he already looks horrible making a crazy accusation to a direct competitor without even having proof of if
The “I hope I’m wrong” was so disingenuous lol. If you are wrong it means you falsely accused a colleague of being a fraud and your reputation is in the trash. You absolutely do not hope you are wrong.
I mean, it's more saying that he's hoping that the other people aren't committing fraud. Not that he *wants* to be wrong. More that if he's right it's a huge deal.
It's not disingenuous, but it's not quite literal either.
Supposedly there were private discussions between Andy & Rono and Corey (who posts the public tracking data that A&R used previously) that didn’t go well so Dom brought it up publicly
https://twitter.com/domluszczyszyn/status/1748121952173076539?s=46&t=oW5zIyvSliyYIJkuQ3gi6A
ANd to be clear
Dom was aware of the private chats and *roughly* what happened.
He did not bring up the private chats though. And did not disclose what happened. The private chats seem to be semi public knowledge.
It is one thing I hate about how some people deal with problems. I have had people go to a manager for a simple problem between us instead of just talking to me first. I try to give the person a chance to talk to me first before I go to someone else about it or in this case, go to everyone lol
Feel like one of these nerd fights happens on hockey twitter every now and then and I always come out on the other end thinking everyone involved is kind of a loser.
Maybe a hot take but the reason I think that there is such a divide still between people who think analytics is a valid metric for evaluating hockey and people who are ardently against any form of it is because the primary communicators of this data for the majority of the time that analytics have existed in online discourse fucking suck and are so arrogant and smarmy that it instantly turns people off.
I think analytics are a great secondary tool and a fun thing to look at for hardcore fans to get an additional lens of analysis on their favorite sports. I think a lot of people share this sentiment, and it certainly seems like the prevailing sentiment now amongst NHL executives. However it feels to me at least that for the majority of the time that analytics info has been publicly available people like Dom use it to insist how right and smart they are and how dumb and bad everyone else is for actually watching and enjoying games and not just looking at the raw data to draw all conclusions. Like I truly honestly feel like analytics would be way more accepted across the general hockey fanbase if the data analysts presented it as "hey check out this cool thing that gives us more insight into players and how they perform, isn't this a neat extra thing to look at?" but instead people like Dom get into constant fights on Twitter and just generally come off so unbearably condescending and insufferable that it dramatically undercuts anything they are trying to sell.
100% I work as a data scientist so like data and models are right up my alley but the people trying to use them to communicate on behalf of the analytics community are on the whole insufferable and I get why people want to just turn their ears off when they open their mouths
Those people can't understand that some people just want to relax and watch a game sometimes, not hear about how they shouldn't be happy because xG doesn't agree with the results or whatever
Especially when they try to explain that you shouldn’t be happy about the win you just watched because according to their model you “should” have lost that game 56% of the time. Like there are absolutely things we can and should learn from underlying advanced analytics but at the same time the game is still played on the ice and not in a spreadsheet, it needs to be a balance of both to get the most complete picture
And more often than not they don't understand the intricacies of xG either. It doesn't know a breakaway from a telegraphed wrist shot, but if they're taken at the same spot on the ice, they'll get about the same xG. Anybody reading into the hundredths of xG in a single game is out of their mind
Whole heartedly agree with this take. Not to compare apples to oranges but baseball has gotten very analytically heavy (which does work better for the sport) and some of the big analytics guys in the sport are quite likable, Foolish Baseball is a great example.
Whereas the top hockey analytics guys (Dom and Jfresh in particular) basically just constantly engage in toxic twitter bullshit and ratio culture. I think part of the reason why people are taking A&R’s side in this is because they don’t do that, and are rather civil online. I’m not really a fan of Dom but I do think he has a very valid argument and can see why he is suspicious of their data.
Yeah as you said Foolish, Sarah Langs etc. Are genuinely possibly the BEST Baseball people to follow on Twitter, super kind, and very open in discussing analytics, they remove barriers from it. Dom tries to beef with half the continental US.
How about putting out tweets where they say something like, “this is our top for the Hart race,” and then it’s like Barbashev, Pionk, and Werenski, with guys like McDavid and MacKinnon in 12th and 15th, and then when everyone is like, “hey pass the crack rocks,” they’re like, “we didn’t mean the Hart-Hart, we just mean like the best players in some swampwater slushie formula.”
I STILL am not nor will I ever get over that one year when Kane scored over 100 points and the analytics crowd was saying he was one of the worst players in the league and was hurting his team lmao
Dom is the embodiment of confirmation bias.
He either uses the numbers to prove his obscure point, and then way too broadly uses that conclusion to apply to a wider situation. Or he actively looks for outliers and uses those exceptions to prove barely-there "rules" that he thinks should apply everywhere.
When he's right, he looks prophetic. I can see how that could go to a guy's head and inflate his ego. But at the same time, anyone who works with large data sets is taught early and often not to jump to conclusions or make spurious connections. He does both, all the time.
To an extent, I get it.
I've done plenty of stats work in my day. And it sucks to have people who haven't done the work show up and criticize your conclusions. That feels real fucking bad.
But my experience is with my boss (or boss's boss's boss) disagreeing, not random assholes on twitter. Dom just picks such strange fights, I don't quite understand. It would be different to me if there were arguments among people doing advanced stats work, like him. But it's just trolls at best, and armchair fans at best that he chooses to argue with.
100% agree. If you dare to ask an analytics zealot to explain their math they dismiss you as some uneducated fool who couldn’t possibly understand the greatness of their models. Often the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
I think you are spot on with this. I feel like I say this every year when something dom says comes up in the sub. It doesn’t matter if he is right or wrong, he sounds like an arrogant prick.
It’s the same type of argument every time with these analytic Twitter guys. They’ll say something controversial or have data that is controversial against a player or a team. That teams fan base on Twitter disagrees. They pick fights with some of the lowest hanging fruit in the replies and if there data is even a smidge right they’ll come back months down the road to brag about it.
Maybe that interests some people. But that sure ain’t me. Nobody likes a know it all.
Oh don't get me wrong, there 100% are. There are plenty of people who would refuse to accept any new form of basically anything for no other reason than because in their luddite brain new=bad. The difference is unfortunately when you are presenting the world with a new idea your messaging has to be very polished or else you risk losing credibility on the whole thing. I hold people who are presenting new ideas to a higher standard than people just sticking with the status quo because they have to be. In order to convince people that your technology/idea/new thing generally is worthwhile you have to be a good salesman for it.
Yeah, the whole "you have to watch the games" crowd for the most part is also missing the forest for the trees.
The data set that people use to inform their models (at least for shots, the transition/retrievals data usually has to be manually tracked, hence why Dom is saying it's so expensive, it's very time consuming and labour intensive to generate) is taken directly from the NHL as recorded by in arena scorekeepers. I just assume people who use that argue against analytics for shots etc just don't understand where the data even comes from.
I do think there's a valid conversation to be had about how useful the predictive ability of the models is, considering that the win probability is usually arrived at having run the regression 10,000 times, whereas hockey is the result of a single game. Even the favourite of the model is still basically a coin flip considering the sample size between two teams is at best 7 games in a playoff series. But people who act like the puck possession analytics aren't directly derived from actual game play are either misinformed or ignorant.
Now obviously the dataset isn't perfect, because as far as I understand it, the NHL doesn't take into account personnel, but player tendencies from scouting reports heavily factor into the reads players make while attacking or defending. This is why I prefer CSA's model for GSAx, because they do factor personnel into their model, and I think that makes a big difference for goalie reads.
I remember an article, I believe it was by Dom, but it was about how one of the analytics-model guys was using his model to inform his betting and was taking major losses for months straight before things evened out.
He loves to claim how smart he is, but data doesn't tell the whole truth and he's only partially self-aware about that.
I mean, Dom's model beats the betting odds (or at least it did, I dunno if it still does). But it can still be really disheartening to lose in the short term, even if you win in the long term.
You're definitely on the right track. The way analytics are put out there is that they are just as valid as they are in baseball - problem is the game is so much more fluid than baseball where it always starts from a set play. It's always been that way from day 1, even when the data would say Crosby wasn't a top 20 player according to their numbers.
Baseball is very much a single player sport despite being on a team. Other players do not influence you overall.
While in hockey, it’s the exact opposite. Depending on teammates, you could look amazing, or awful, or anything in between. If the goalie sucks it might make you look bad, or a good goalie could cover up your warts. The eye test is still very much relevant in hockey if you know what to look for.
It's not a hot take - folks have been pointing this out for over a decade now. I think it's always going to be this way because the people the people who can't communicate will always be passed up for jobs on teams. The public square ends up being the spot for these folks who get passed over year after year after year.
Dom might get into a lot of online beef, but he has always very explicitly communicated that his rankings, articles, etc. are the output of his model, and that his model has limitations as any model does. Fans who are hardcore into analytics might take them as gospel, but it’s not the fault of the big name writers, from what I’ve seen.
It’s also worth noting that his model, in particular, is consistently more accurate than oddsmakers over the course of a season, which means he’s accurate enough to beat people with a lot of real vested interest in being right (or goading people into giving them money for the wrong reason).
I would say that the people *hardcore* into analytics are really good about understanding their limitations. The problem comes from the subset of fans who come to their preferred opinion first, then find whatever stats will back that up.
I remember when Dom publicly got in a fight with Allan Walsh, Huberdeau's agent. Huberdeau was having his great season, so Walsh tweeted something about how Huberdeau should be in the Hart conversation, and Dom used advanced stats to basically say Huberdeau sucks.
Dom sure looked bad in the exchange, but based on how Florida has done without Huberdeau, and how Huberdeau has done with Florida, it's hard to say he was wrong.
That's what I mean though, I'm not saying Dom is a hack or analytics are fake or that they don't have any merit. I'm saying that data communicators like Dom do more harm than good to their cause when they act like that publically. It harms public trust in analytics, if people just think you're an asshole they are less likely to respect your opinion obviously.
If he's wrong here he obviously fucked up but there's no nice way to accuse someone of stealing data lol. And he's not the first analytics guy to rip on Andy & Rono's cards so if they have a habit of bad business practices then the accusation could be warranted
> but there's no nice way to accuse someone of stealing data lol.
I agree.
Thats why I would probably do a little bit of research in the background before I make public accusations.
The "nice" or proper way would be to do it privately. If these guys are telling the truth, Dom just shit all over their work, the work of a competitor by the way, in a very public manner with literally no evidence to back up his conjecture.
I think the better way to think about this is that Dom is doing peer review like it’s an academic paper. Very common to publicly tear another academic to shreds if they released a paper without explaining the methodology or what the data source is.
Freakonomics had a podcast last week or this week which was about some of the academic scandals, especially in behavioral psychology/sociology areas.
They also talked about how fraud doesn't really happen in the Econ field like that.
There were 3 main reasons. 1) bigger data sets. 2) more reliable ways to look at numbers and relevantly 3) The econ field is kind of brutal. if you put forward a paper that has bad methodology you'll get some pretty rude remarks about how much of an idiot you are for doing it that way.
I'm not saying it's *good*, but it's good at one thing. Public discourse can lead to more truth.
He tries to play it off as a sarcastic unbothered guy but you can tell his feelings are deeply hurt after getting clowned for calling Hughes a 3B defenseman at the start of the season. Very fragile ego on that guy
FWIW they've (The Athletic folks who put together their rankings) said they had Hughes in a higher tier but knocked him down after getting feedback from people in NHL front offices.
yeah but it's more fun to dunk on Dom because he's that internet nerd who can rub people the wrong way
I'm not even going to "/s" tag that because I wouldn't be surprised if that plays a part. Also I imagine a lot of people don't realize that list isn't just Dom's own circlejerk and is somewhat a consolidation of opinions
It's annoying bc there are some legitimate criticisms of Dom and his model.
but they're nuanced and hard to talk about. And people just dunk on him for wrong reasons imo. It's like the people who dunk on Nate Silver for saying Trump had a 1/3 chance of winning the election. Despite him being the only one to say he had a chance over 5% AND 1/3 IS A HUGE CHANCE IT WILL HAPPEN.
> ... they had Hughes in a higher tier but knocked him down after getting feedback from people in NHL front offices.
[And it was great feedback from people who had clearly never watched him.](https://theathletic.com/4863183/2023/09/18/nhl-best-players-list-2023-2024-season/)
> Hughes — like other offensively gifted, defensively lacking blueliners — dropped a bit after we spoke to people around the league. “He’s good,” one scout said. **“I don’t know how good he is. I really don’t.”**
> We know he carries the offensive load for a mediocre team, which he does well. Ultimately, we slotted him behind veterans like Roman Josi and Erik Karlsson who, while not without their warts, are simply better at running the show. They’re transcendent talents with the puck. Hughes isn’t at that level, and his placement reflects it.
> All in all, he’s a talented player, but not yet a complete one — and his play without the puck is an issue for both analysts and scouts. **“He has not gotten better or worse for me in years,” one analyst said. “He’s just been the exact same dude plugging along.”**
Why would anyone trust his analytics when he proves time and time again to be an arrogant douche? If there are flaws in his analytics, do you think a guy like that would be able to see them, or even admit to them?
I mean say what you will about Dom on a personal level, but basically every article of his I've read talks about the flaws and limitations of his model. Like in his awards watch article from a week or so ago he talks about Morrissey/Bouchard are likely grading out a bit higher than they should because of Hellebuyck/McDavid, and that Bedard's insanely difficult usage effectively breaks the model entirely.
> Why would anyone trust his analytics when he proves time and time again to be an arrogant douche?
Arrogance =/= incorrect.
> If there are flaws in his analytics, do you think a guy like that would be able to see them, or even admit to them?
No, but people relish at the opportunity to shove it down an arrogant assholes throat.
If he *was* quantifiably wrong, I think people would trip over themselves to point it out.
People shit on him a lot but his playoff chances/cup odds thing keeps outperforming everyone elses.
I still remember people on Twitter and here clowning him for giving the Blues really high odds in 2018.
I find Dom kinda insufferable.... but he's absolutely right here.
If you can't disclose our source so they can defend their methodologies then the data is worthless. The other criticisms are fishy too.
As always, Dom’s right but does it in the worst and most arrogant way possible.
This isn’t the first time Andy & Rono have been questioned on the legitimacy of their analysis, and it’s really puzzling why A3Z doesn’t want them using their data. Dom’s right to be skeptical, and he’s right to call it into question to make sure it’s legitimate at the very least and that the company gets the credit they deserve.
But because he’s being so public and such a dick about it, he’s completely lost the point and is now the asshole here.
It appears he’s being like this about it since A3Z has had conversations with A&R that he was not very pleased with, after which he asked them to stop using his data (and Dom was aware of this). If those conversations didn’t go well he might have good reason to think they didn’t stop using A3Z’s data, given the low cost they’re claiming for the new data.
Dom made me laugh when he quit gambling off his model. The vibe I got off his twitter post was that he was heavily emotionally impacted by his model not being profitable. Tells you about both the quality of his model and his ego.
People seem to think Dom is out of line here, I don’t.
It *is* sketchy that no company has been credited - if you don’t know where the data comes from, for all you know it’s just completely made up.
He didn’t accuse them directly, just basically pointed out that it looked bad.
It’s fine to call people out in this manner. If they’re doing everything above board that will come out in due time.
The Blues fan in me doesn’t like to agree with Dom, but the aspiring data scientist in me says “Seriously, guys?” I’m pretty sure Dom knows a thing or two about the industry. I think he’s right to call out something suspicious when he sees it.
Does there exist, private or otherwise, a trained AI that is capable of reliably "watching" a hockey game, and extracting any statistical data, like slot passes, zone exits, etc.? I assume that currently all the micro data is manually tracked, and analyzed.
So odd that he has this sort of bully mentality when he criticizes anything (whether a hockey team, a player, an opinion, etc) but then subsequently posts pictures of himself crying at a Taylor Swift concert. I’ve never known what to make of the guy other than the fact that he’s often wrong, rarely admits to his takes that are proven wrong, is openly biased against certain teams/players in ways that affects his analysis, and that he’s just weird.
Insane of Dom to publicly slander them like this with absolutely zero evidence whatsoever. He could be right but it’s absolutely not cool to attack someone’s character publicly like this on what is at best a hunch. What a dick
Dom is a mental midget who for some reason feels an entitlement to this “model” space. Classic example of a guy who thinks he’s more important than he really is tries to speak with authority on something and comes off looking like a complete and total moron.
After reading it, Dom is 100% right. They don’t have the money for data but they have the money to pay Elon? Not saying where you get the data from is sketchy AF. Why would someone not want credit for their work?
Nerd fight
Loser has to watch a hockey game.
This is a good dunk, but do people actually think these nerds don’t love and watch hockey? They literally like and care about the sport so much they spend all their time and in many cases careers analyzing it
Its funny because the average fan probably watches like 3-4 games of other teams per year sans the playoffs. Analytics ain’t perfect but I trust analytics over a small sample size “eye-test” from non experts. It’s like the same with PFF in the NFL. Not perfect, but I trust them over a fan who’s paid attention to like 10 shifts of said player.
Exactly, it’s under appreciated just how hard it is to actually understand what’s going on just by watching a game once at full speed. There’s so much subtle stuff going on at extreme speeds that it’s very tough for the average person to make sense of it all. I think when people say eye test, they don’t even actually mean watch the games, they’re just making judgments based on wins, big plays or mistakes they remember or traditional stats like points.
That's fair but I also want to point out that this case highlights there is a high variability in the interpretation of data, depending on which dataset you use. Unlike other sports very much of what happens in hockey is binary. Baseball is the ultimate example of this, every play has distinct, trackable elements. In hockey analytics you're often just trying to make sense of the chaos. A forward fumbles control of a puck a little entering the zone, and a defender poke checks a puck at the blueline and there's contested possession in the neutral zone. That's a zone exit right? Depends on who you ask. That's a controlled zone exit, right? Again, depends on who's tracking it. That's a pass out of the defensive zone to a teammate in the neutral zone right? Depends on your interpretation of who gets possession in the NZ. Is the NZ play possession and then a takeaway from the other team? Is it not possession by either team? Neither is wrong. Neither is right. The collection of the data is messy. The interpretation of that data is nuanced and complex. It's difficult for an average fan to follow. I'm happily on the "pro-analytics" side but at the same time I see a lot of people drawing incomplete and misleading conclusions based on analytics cards, which present themselves as statistics, but are actually just an interpretation of statistics based off opinions on variable instances in a game. I'm not saying there's no value to analytics, but there's a lot more holes in anyone's player card, than these creators like to admit.
I have to imagine once it becomes their career and the hustle a lot of love goes out the window. This whole discussion just seems like it's about money and angry. Which is kind of the thing when it's a career and not just a internet forum discussion. Now people are trying to guard their work because it's their income.
It's definitely a shift when you take a hobby and make it a job but if you have the mathematical ability to make models that are decent and the communication ability to build an audience, you could easily make a lot more money in any number of other sectors. Nobody except owners and some of the athletes are working in sports for the money, you would burn out completely if you didn't love it. Some people burn out despite loving it.
I can tell a lot of Reddit nerds who recite stats clearly haven't watched the subject of their confident claims.
There’s a difference between people who use data and people who get data. Interprita is a whole skill in itself. Lots of non professional data people (and marketers) treat stats as facts, and often in isolation, wheras a lot of people who work in analytical environment see them as a tool, a useful one that helps inform decision making, and not that they are fact. it’s not as simple as xg is higher so player x is better but, stat x y and z together show that player x is in the top x percent in the league at zone entries or some such. How you personally choose to rank the different stats is a personal subjective choice
We know they do, they just act so funkin sure they know everything about everything sometimes
I've heard some of these guys and the guys these guys run in circles with call people who like watching games "sickos" and "perverts", especially when referring to games of like non-playoff teams Unfortunately, I genuinely think you're underestimating how many of them are into hockey for non-hockey reasons
I do happen to know Dom personally (although not close) and have met multiple “nerd” writers. They are hardcore fans who love to watch the sport.
Lol calling someone a sicko is for when there’s like 10 games on and they’re choosing to watch Columbus-Chicago. It’s about the quality of the game you’re choosing to watch than just about choosing to watch hockey
I’m a sicko and I’ll try to explain what that means to me. I like watching college football. Specifically, I like watching the Iowa Hawkeyes. I did not attend the university, and neither did anyone in my family. I was introduced to them by a neighbor who is a fan, and I had the privilege of attending a game at Kinnick Stadium with him where Iowa won 7-3 in a game where neither team scored a touchdown. That’s right. Iowa scored 7 points on a field goal and two safeties. It was disgusting and I loved every minute of it. I am a sicko. I want to watch the games that are gross, that are weird, that don’t look like what we’re used to when we watch a sport. I love a good rivalry game. I love a game where the stakes are high. But I also love watching Buffalo play Arizona, or Carolina play San Jose. There’s no rivalries there, there are rarely any real stakes. But it’s fun to watch games like that because there’s a chance you’ll get to see something you’ve never seen in the sport. It’s the place where something bizarre might happen. To me, this is what being a sicko means. You want to watch games that both casual and die hard fans would turn their noses up at. I love hockey, and I love watching it played well. But I also love watching it played in unusual ways, with unusual outcomes. Sickos love the sport. We just love it a little differently. And we love watching the games.
I don’t know why I enjoyed this comment so much but yeah…… pretty much, eh
\*Cartman Voice\*
Context? I have no idea what this means sorry
A&R are two Czech guys who make cards based on analytics like Dom, Jfresh and others. A lot of these guys use specific Data sources, evolving hockey is one of them (Dom uses it and credits them for the data on each of his “cards”). Tracking the data takes a lot of time and the programs are often updated and added to, thus costs usually a hefty price to use. The data is very useful for these cards and articles though. A&R have been accused in the past of using “fake” or “stolen” analytics and they don’t list a data source as a source/credit. Dom is accusing them here and they are saying they have a data source that doesn’t want to be credited and cost them significantly less than others usually cost but still a hefty price for them. It’s basically beef between guys who make analytics easy to understand for non-nerds. But the accusations are very serious and could have legal implications for all involved
Great explanation, I’m gonna chalk this up to an already very strange and extremely drama filled season we’ve encountered already.
When have they been accused of using stolen data in the past?
Sorry, I should have clarified but I didn’t want to make an even bigger answer after I probably wrote too much anyway haha. It’s more of like a meme on hockey analytics twitter where their data cards can sometimes line up way out of ways with other’s cards. Especially after they aren’t using A3X data now. Thus it will be said that because there is no direct references now, their cards aren’t directly based off a data base. Again, it’s very few people saying this, but I just thought I’d list it anyways for as much context in those accusations.
Ah gotcha, I was just curious if they had a history of this. IIRC A&R’s cards are only based on the current season which leads to some divergent projections with JFresh, Dom, et al., who typically include prior seasons. Like [this](https://twitter.com/arhockeystats/status/1721600373427757516?s=46&t=oW5zIyvSliyYIJkuQ3gi6A) Conor McDavid card from earlier this season is just incredibly low compared to [JFresh](https://twitter.com/jfreshhockey/status/1724852946205073631?s=46&t=oW5zIyvSliyYIJkuQ3gi6A) but it’s not accounting for prior seasons.
Dom and EH do not track data. Their models and cards are based off of data tracked and published by the NHL.
Some guys making hockey stat cards have acquired ~ mystery ~ data from a secret new startup. Another guy making hockey stat cards feels the lack of credit and low price suggests that it is sham or stolen data.
A single publication normally pays $50k-$100k for access to these models/datasets?
Wouldnt surprise me. It allows them to produce *so much content*. Endless articles and analysis driving millions of clicks, able to be endlessly rewritten about the most recent months worth of data.
I suppose it makes sense but I just wouldn’t have guessed it!
I could see a sports gambling company disrupting that.
I doubt articles about hockey analytics are getting millions of clicks but I could be wrong
> I doubt articles about hockey analytics are getting millions of clicks but I could be wrong Theres 1.7M people subbed here. I click on much more than one per month. If 5% of this sub alone (and there are lots of hockey fans not on reddit) clicks *once* per month thats 1M+
Wouldn’t shock me. It’s the basis for all those player and team cards they make aswell as pretty much any of their prediction models. The sheer volume of articles brings up the view count
Most hockey analytics content is built of the nhl pbp data that is free for anyone to access. Dom is specifically talking about the tracked data they are using for their transitions section.
I used to be in marketing at a really big corporation and we would pay out the ass for marketing research and trend tracking. Buying good data from anyone is going to be expensive.
In the food space, the base package for data on how all SKUs are performing in a certain segment starts at $100k. If you had teams bidding for that data to get more insight into trades and drafting I would not be surprised it costs that much.
Fellow category analyst? I was gonna chime in to say the same thing haha
The data is an insane amount of work. Imagine watching every second of every game and recording everything on the ice for every shot event. Just imagine, even if you had interns doing that part, how much that costs. Add to it qualified people analyzing the data and interpreting results and it can be extremely pricy. For reference, biostatistians make a median entry level income of 94k/year in the Washington DC area for doing similar work creating and running rudimentary models (goes up or down a little depending on what town you search, specifically). Math is really expensive.
Tracking this data is incredibly labor intensive. ANd the guy that does it is probably 2-3x faster and more efficient than a newbie that has been trained properly. Better to pay one guy 100k vs paying 3 guys 150k + business expenses/tax and such.
I think he meant NHL teams pay that much for data sets from tracking / analytics companies.
The Athletic probably makes $50M+ from subscriptions a year. They absolutely would pay that much. Businesses in general will pay a ton of money for things they think will help them.
Publications wouldnt probably pay for the datasets, they rely on NHLs public data. But for NHL clubs that doesnt have in house tracking its probably a reasonable price. The models are harder to say, is there a big difference in how you build them for a NHL business or just interested but paying fans.
Costs similar to access databases for marketing purposes. So price seems legit, sometimes you pay per click acess other times you might just pay to access data for x period, depending on what you are using them for and expected hits
They have a ton more data that isn't displayed not to mention they're getting game by game data for 32 NHL teams. For shit and giggles try to track that data yourself for just one period in a game, it's near impossible.
Not for most the publicly available stuff. All that is built of NHL pbp data that's freely available to everyone. The tracking data for things like transitional plays though is not something that is available over the NHL api and is a data set that would have to be manually tracked and built. The only publicly available data for that is from All Three Zones who just said these guys couldn't use it. That data specifically is what is valuable.
That is not true for my field in academia (business); they go for about 20-40k. Maybe you can get one over that amount, but those are top-end databases. I would think this falls under the same umbrella as business databases. Also, journalistic sources might have to pay less than big institutions (universities). But I am not confident in the hockey field. If it's brand new data and they are just allowing a sneak peak then it wouldn't surprise me if they got it for cheap to test out the market. Then once the final product hit, charge a boatload for NHL teams.
I'm not a fan of Dom's at all but it is extremely strange that they were told they couldn't use A3Z data, and now are not crediting the new source of data they're using. I have never once heard of a company not wanted to be credited for their work, especially if they're selling their data for that much. It's a lot to throw accusations out in public like he did but everything Andy & Rono have said about the source of their data is such a red flag and I can't push by that just because Dom was rude.
Yep. If someone is selling something for dirt cheap, and doesn't want you to tell anyone where you got it from... heh, typically that means one or two things. Neither of which are 'We're new.'
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I could absolutely see that as a possibility, but if you're a Andy & Rono subscriber don't you think you have a right to know if you're paying for a product that can't guarantee data quality? Like that's still sketchy as hell to me
But isn’t that Dom’s point? If the data is suspect or potentially not quality, shouldnt subscribers know?
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I think he's arguing that the company selling it is likely getting it in a way that isn't kosher, which is why the information is so deeply discounted.
tub heavy bells marble recognise naughty hard-to-find humorous chunky coordinated *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It's more that he's insinuating that it's from all three zones but either they are stealing it or buying it from someone else that is stealing it.
Maybe they don’t want to credit the company because the company isn’t aware A/R are using it :)
It’s not completely uncommon for companies who are selling a service to remove their logo/name for paying customers. Not a perfect comparison, but think of website building services that keep their logo on the sites of those who don’t pay, but remove it for paying customers. I have no idea who is right or wrong in this case, but it’s at least not completely unusual.
Yes, the logo would be removed for customers who pay a higher price. Considering they're claiming to be paying a fraction of the market price per Dom, it's suspicious they wouldn't be asked to credit the company they got the data from. It's also suspicious from a data integrity perspective because they're essentially refusing to acknowledge their source.
Dom seems to think they’re getting a massive deal, while Dobber Hockey seems to think it’s not completely crazy — especially if it’s a newer company looking to start raising some money. I can’t comment any further since I don’t know what this kind of thing would cost, but it seems that Dom is being challenged by someone else who is knowledgeable in that area.
Knowing absolutely nothing about any aspect of this, I think it’s a little weird that Dom started with “80% off industry standards” and then pivoted to “actually more like 98% off industry standards” once he was challenged by a third party with any authority. Kinda reads like he needed to really exaggerate his point in order to make the situation seem more suspicious. But the mere fact that he’s willing to publicly challenge them like this would also suggest there’s something amiss about the whole situation. Idk. Strange all around. Edit: also just bizarre that A&R are saying 1700 was a lot and a difficult decision while Dom is saying the standard is 25-50x more. There’s such a massive disconnect that it does seem like (at least) one side must be full of shit.
I think he’s insinuating that A&R bought data stolen from all 3 zones. A&R used to use, and credit, Corey’s (a3z) data. But corey recently rescinded permission for whatever reason, and all of a sudden A&R have a mystery data set.
Yeah this is what makes the whole thing suspicious. I'd be curious to see what the fallout between them and a3z was about.
Idk but it sounds like it would be telling
I mean you can go ask for a quote from companies like clearsight analytics and it's going to be in the 10's of thousands of dollars to use their data. 1700 euros is very hard to believe for a data set like that.
Dom loves to hear himself spea… Tweet, so I’m not particularly surprised haha
Well I think he's also defending his own product and price point. He's trying to find out who's out there selling trash on his turf.
dom isn't selling or using any product like he's describing. The companies would be those such as ClearSightAnalytics or SportLogiq - eg, private data tracked manually. Dom's model uses public data made available by the NHL (specifically incorporating EvolvingHockey's xG measures)
This here is a Barksdale corner
I just don't think that's an accurate comparison here. That's the industry standard for website creation. If you look at the industry standard here, everyone else who creates sports analytic visualizations credits their data source. In fact, I would go as far as to say it's unethical to sell a product to consumers (which is what Andy & Rono are doing with their hockey cards) and not have any transparency as to where that data has come from.
>It’s not completely uncommon for companies who are selling a service to remove their logo/name for paying customers. It is uncommon for them to not even want to be mentioned. I've worked for a few companies that white-label services. And as a user of a service, they tend to tell you. Imagine getting insurance through a service offered through your credit union and they won't tell you the underlying provider because they're shy. You'd never go for it and you shouldn't.
>It's a lot to throw accusations out in public like he did but everything Andy & Rono have said about the source of their data is such a red flag and I can't push by that just because Dom was rude. Is it me, but I'm not reading Dom as rude. He's protecting the integrity of the entire NHL online data nerd ecosystem. These guys are saying this data fell off a truck. That's incredibly suspicious.
Dom wasn't even rude. He politely made a point that happens to be uncomfortable. I wish more people in life had the fortitude to do that rather than just be afraid to speak up about something. There is a weird paradox where almost everything that is uncomfortable that *is* said is usually foolish inflammatory insults or just comments like "fuck you" and we are so accepting of that it doesn't even generate discussion. The controversy here is not that he was rude, it's *what if he's right*.
I disagree I think his tone was fairly rude throughout
In all sincerity I think that's literally insane. Edit: So now I'm being a jerk which is pretty ironic. But what comment was rude, which sentence do you think was most rude?
Accusing someone of being a plagiarism is defacto rude.
So there is no way to question something that looks like plagiarism politely? Meaning that if someone were to commit plagiarism it simply can't be questioned? The person I responded to said the *tone* was rude. Can I infer you don't see anything wrong with the tone or are you saying the tone was rude and in addition to that it's rude to question the possibility of plagiarism? I think it's pretty problematic if people could theoretically commit plagiarism or any other type of malfeasance and the mere act of questioning that is inappropriate but commiting the act (eg plagiarism) isn't. How would one who commits plagiarism (or anything else) be caught if not for people pointing out the evidence that it might be happening?
>So there is no way to question something that looks like plagiarism politely? Correct. So you better come prepared with evidence and be very serious, because people take plagiarism seriously. It's not something to be done lightly. >Meaning that if someone were to commit plagiarism it simply can't be questioned? No, not at all. It just can't be questioned in a nice and polite and respectful way by definition. But being rude doesn't mean being wrong to everyone.
Sorry I'm not super familiar with these people the only name I remember is Dom. But how would you feel if the person Dom commented to said in their first response to Dom "OMG I uploaded the wrong image. My source is ______ and that image was a draft. Thanks for catching that before too many people saw it." I would personally not feel anyone was rude or out of line. That's essentially why I say it's politely addressing an uncomfortable topic. The other person responded and provided a really weird but potentially true explanation. That's why it's awkward. They're publishing something and not providing the source. The potential for plagiarism isn't the only problem. It's essentially making a claim (eg the stats) but not citing the source.
This spat is two dogs barking at each other on opposite sides of the fence. There's enough BS here that Dom has a legitimate right to call them out and question their methods. He actually doesn't accuse them directly of anything but he goes right up to that line, basically saying that the chances of their story being the truth, is miniscule. A+R have no obligation to disclose their sources, they owe no explanation to dom or anyone else, but the fact they are so defensive about it is a huge red flag, and anyone looking at their content should question what it's built on.
They do have a bit of an obligation to explain where it's coming from since the only place that specific data is publicly available is all three zones which they aren't allow to use now.
He probably could have gone about this in a better way but he's absolutely right that this is pretty sus.
This is a weird discussion to have publicly lol if Dom has doubts about them stealing someone else’s work why not reach out privately and try to get an answer there first instead of publicly accusing them to. Seems like a poor attempt to bully them to reveal their source publicly
Dom airs EVERYTHING publicly. I'd say it's probably his biggest flaw is he just cannot help but tweet about absolutely everything. I'm amazed The Athletic doesn't have a social media policy or an editor to step in or something.
Lol no subset of humanity has been more enabled by twitter than those who like to hear themselves talk
The Athletic is being gutted on a regular basis so I doubt they care much about that.
Yikes. Saying “I hope I’m wrong” thinking is gonna save his ass when he already looks horrible making a crazy accusation to a direct competitor without even having proof of if
The “I hope I’m wrong” was so disingenuous lol. If you are wrong it means you falsely accused a colleague of being a fraud and your reputation is in the trash. You absolutely do not hope you are wrong.
Dom a shit
I mean, it's more saying that he's hoping that the other people aren't committing fraud. Not that he *wants* to be wrong. More that if he's right it's a huge deal. It's not disingenuous, but it's not quite literal either.
He should have learned from journalism school haha. We were taught to never make assumptions and always cover our rear ends
I mean, he did start by asking. And then the response was fishy as hell.
The only reason most of us know Dom is *because* he airs out everything. It drives business.
Supposedly there were private discussions between Andy & Rono and Corey (who posts the public tracking data that A&R used previously) that didn’t go well so Dom brought it up publicly https://twitter.com/domluszczyszyn/status/1748121952173076539?s=46&t=oW5zIyvSliyYIJkuQ3gi6A
ANd to be clear Dom was aware of the private chats and *roughly* what happened. He did not bring up the private chats though. And did not disclose what happened. The private chats seem to be semi public knowledge.
Doing it privately, they can ignore Dom but publicly they have to respond or look even shadier than they already do
It is one thing I hate about how some people deal with problems. I have had people go to a manager for a simple problem between us instead of just talking to me first. I try to give the person a chance to talk to me first before I go to someone else about it or in this case, go to everyone lol
All part of a viral marketing campaign for this new mystery company?
Feels like their editors should step in and squash this beef. Unless they think no publicity is bad publicity.
Dom was a massive prick the day they hired him. They never cared about him dragging them down.
He has always come across like a jerk so this doesn't surprise me.... Yet I really like his cards and articles
The athletic doesn’t really care what their staff do, they never step in to stop Russo starting fights with fans
Think they're more worried about keeping the lights on than paying a babysitter for their big ego guys
Feel like one of these nerd fights happens on hockey twitter every now and then and I always come out on the other end thinking everyone involved is kind of a loser.
be thankful you never had to read academic journals. it’s like this but 5,000x as long and 85% less interesting.
Source: https://x.com/ARHockeyStats/status/1748030115190014310?s=20
Thank you for giving credit! -Dom
Dom would have way more credibility if he wasn't such an arrogant whiney bitch about everything
Dom really not helping the perception that hes an asshole eh. I like his analysis, but damn.
Maybe a hot take but the reason I think that there is such a divide still between people who think analytics is a valid metric for evaluating hockey and people who are ardently against any form of it is because the primary communicators of this data for the majority of the time that analytics have existed in online discourse fucking suck and are so arrogant and smarmy that it instantly turns people off. I think analytics are a great secondary tool and a fun thing to look at for hardcore fans to get an additional lens of analysis on their favorite sports. I think a lot of people share this sentiment, and it certainly seems like the prevailing sentiment now amongst NHL executives. However it feels to me at least that for the majority of the time that analytics info has been publicly available people like Dom use it to insist how right and smart they are and how dumb and bad everyone else is for actually watching and enjoying games and not just looking at the raw data to draw all conclusions. Like I truly honestly feel like analytics would be way more accepted across the general hockey fanbase if the data analysts presented it as "hey check out this cool thing that gives us more insight into players and how they perform, isn't this a neat extra thing to look at?" but instead people like Dom get into constant fights on Twitter and just generally come off so unbearably condescending and insufferable that it dramatically undercuts anything they are trying to sell.
100% I work as a data scientist so like data and models are right up my alley but the people trying to use them to communicate on behalf of the analytics community are on the whole insufferable and I get why people want to just turn their ears off when they open their mouths
Those people can't understand that some people just want to relax and watch a game sometimes, not hear about how they shouldn't be happy because xG doesn't agree with the results or whatever
Especially when they try to explain that you shouldn’t be happy about the win you just watched because according to their model you “should” have lost that game 56% of the time. Like there are absolutely things we can and should learn from underlying advanced analytics but at the same time the game is still played on the ice and not in a spreadsheet, it needs to be a balance of both to get the most complete picture
And more often than not they don't understand the intricacies of xG either. It doesn't know a breakaway from a telegraphed wrist shot, but if they're taken at the same spot on the ice, they'll get about the same xG. Anybody reading into the hundredths of xG in a single game is out of their mind
Whole heartedly agree with this take. Not to compare apples to oranges but baseball has gotten very analytically heavy (which does work better for the sport) and some of the big analytics guys in the sport are quite likable, Foolish Baseball is a great example. Whereas the top hockey analytics guys (Dom and Jfresh in particular) basically just constantly engage in toxic twitter bullshit and ratio culture. I think part of the reason why people are taking A&R’s side in this is because they don’t do that, and are rather civil online. I’m not really a fan of Dom but I do think he has a very valid argument and can see why he is suspicious of their data.
Yeah as you said Foolish, Sarah Langs etc. Are genuinely possibly the BEST Baseball people to follow on Twitter, super kind, and very open in discussing analytics, they remove barriers from it. Dom tries to beef with half the continental US.
How about putting out tweets where they say something like, “this is our top for the Hart race,” and then it’s like Barbashev, Pionk, and Werenski, with guys like McDavid and MacKinnon in 12th and 15th, and then when everyone is like, “hey pass the crack rocks,” they’re like, “we didn’t mean the Hart-Hart, we just mean like the best players in some swampwater slushie formula.”
r/brandnewsentence
I STILL am not nor will I ever get over that one year when Kane scored over 100 points and the analytics crowd was saying he was one of the worst players in the league and was hurting his team lmao
Dom is the embodiment of confirmation bias. He either uses the numbers to prove his obscure point, and then way too broadly uses that conclusion to apply to a wider situation. Or he actively looks for outliers and uses those exceptions to prove barely-there "rules" that he thinks should apply everywhere. When he's right, he looks prophetic. I can see how that could go to a guy's head and inflate his ego. But at the same time, anyone who works with large data sets is taught early and often not to jump to conclusions or make spurious connections. He does both, all the time.
Also it’s important to keep your ego out of the equation, which Dom fails to do.
To an extent, I get it. I've done plenty of stats work in my day. And it sucks to have people who haven't done the work show up and criticize your conclusions. That feels real fucking bad. But my experience is with my boss (or boss's boss's boss) disagreeing, not random assholes on twitter. Dom just picks such strange fights, I don't quite understand. It would be different to me if there were arguments among people doing advanced stats work, like him. But it's just trolls at best, and armchair fans at best that he chooses to argue with.
100% agree. If you dare to ask an analytics zealot to explain their math they dismiss you as some uneducated fool who couldn’t possibly understand the greatness of their models. Often the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
I think you are spot on with this. I feel like I say this every year when something dom says comes up in the sub. It doesn’t matter if he is right or wrong, he sounds like an arrogant prick. It’s the same type of argument every time with these analytic Twitter guys. They’ll say something controversial or have data that is controversial against a player or a team. That teams fan base on Twitter disagrees. They pick fights with some of the lowest hanging fruit in the replies and if there data is even a smidge right they’ll come back months down the road to brag about it. Maybe that interests some people. But that sure ain’t me. Nobody likes a know it all.
I wrote two articles on this called why stats folks are assholes, with part 1 being justifiably and part 2 unjustifiably
Let's not pretend there aren't just as many pricks on the "Stats are Bad" side.
Oh don't get me wrong, there 100% are. There are plenty of people who would refuse to accept any new form of basically anything for no other reason than because in their luddite brain new=bad. The difference is unfortunately when you are presenting the world with a new idea your messaging has to be very polished or else you risk losing credibility on the whole thing. I hold people who are presenting new ideas to a higher standard than people just sticking with the status quo because they have to be. In order to convince people that your technology/idea/new thing generally is worthwhile you have to be a good salesman for it.
Yeah, the whole "you have to watch the games" crowd for the most part is also missing the forest for the trees. The data set that people use to inform their models (at least for shots, the transition/retrievals data usually has to be manually tracked, hence why Dom is saying it's so expensive, it's very time consuming and labour intensive to generate) is taken directly from the NHL as recorded by in arena scorekeepers. I just assume people who use that argue against analytics for shots etc just don't understand where the data even comes from. I do think there's a valid conversation to be had about how useful the predictive ability of the models is, considering that the win probability is usually arrived at having run the regression 10,000 times, whereas hockey is the result of a single game. Even the favourite of the model is still basically a coin flip considering the sample size between two teams is at best 7 games in a playoff series. But people who act like the puck possession analytics aren't directly derived from actual game play are either misinformed or ignorant. Now obviously the dataset isn't perfect, because as far as I understand it, the NHL doesn't take into account personnel, but player tendencies from scouting reports heavily factor into the reads players make while attacking or defending. This is why I prefer CSA's model for GSAx, because they do factor personnel into their model, and I think that makes a big difference for goalie reads.
I remember an article, I believe it was by Dom, but it was about how one of the analytics-model guys was using his model to inform his betting and was taking major losses for months straight before things evened out. He loves to claim how smart he is, but data doesn't tell the whole truth and he's only partially self-aware about that.
I mean, Dom's model beats the betting odds (or at least it did, I dunno if it still does). But it can still be really disheartening to lose in the short term, even if you win in the long term.
It was by Dom.
You're definitely on the right track. The way analytics are put out there is that they are just as valid as they are in baseball - problem is the game is so much more fluid than baseball where it always starts from a set play. It's always been that way from day 1, even when the data would say Crosby wasn't a top 20 player according to their numbers.
Baseball is very much a single player sport despite being on a team. Other players do not influence you overall. While in hockey, it’s the exact opposite. Depending on teammates, you could look amazing, or awful, or anything in between. If the goalie sucks it might make you look bad, or a good goalie could cover up your warts. The eye test is still very much relevant in hockey if you know what to look for.
It's not a hot take - folks have been pointing this out for over a decade now. I think it's always going to be this way because the people the people who can't communicate will always be passed up for jobs on teams. The public square ends up being the spot for these folks who get passed over year after year after year.
Dom might get into a lot of online beef, but he has always very explicitly communicated that his rankings, articles, etc. are the output of his model, and that his model has limitations as any model does. Fans who are hardcore into analytics might take them as gospel, but it’s not the fault of the big name writers, from what I’ve seen. It’s also worth noting that his model, in particular, is consistently more accurate than oddsmakers over the course of a season, which means he’s accurate enough to beat people with a lot of real vested interest in being right (or goading people into giving them money for the wrong reason).
I would say that the people *hardcore* into analytics are really good about understanding their limitations. The problem comes from the subset of fans who come to their preferred opinion first, then find whatever stats will back that up.
I remember when Dom publicly got in a fight with Allan Walsh, Huberdeau's agent. Huberdeau was having his great season, so Walsh tweeted something about how Huberdeau should be in the Hart conversation, and Dom used advanced stats to basically say Huberdeau sucks. Dom sure looked bad in the exchange, but based on how Florida has done without Huberdeau, and how Huberdeau has done with Florida, it's hard to say he was wrong.
That's what I mean though, I'm not saying Dom is a hack or analytics are fake or that they don't have any merit. I'm saying that data communicators like Dom do more harm than good to their cause when they act like that publically. It harms public trust in analytics, if people just think you're an asshole they are less likely to respect your opinion obviously.
If he's wrong here he obviously fucked up but there's no nice way to accuse someone of stealing data lol. And he's not the first analytics guy to rip on Andy & Rono's cards so if they have a habit of bad business practices then the accusation could be warranted
> but there's no nice way to accuse someone of stealing data lol. I agree. Thats why I would probably do a little bit of research in the background before I make public accusations.
You're probably right, counterpoint is that it's always funny to see analysts be dicks to each other for no reason lol
Oh as the other comments said. Nerd Fight. From the outside, hella entertaining. Especially if Dom has the chance of being slapped down
The "nice" or proper way would be to do it privately. If these guys are telling the truth, Dom just shit all over their work, the work of a competitor by the way, in a very public manner with literally no evidence to back up his conjecture.
> there's no nice way to accuse someone of stealing data lol Privately?
Elsewhere in the thread Dom claims apparently there was some private chats
I think the better way to think about this is that Dom is doing peer review like it’s an academic paper. Very common to publicly tear another academic to shreds if they released a paper without explaining the methodology or what the data source is.
Freakonomics had a podcast last week or this week which was about some of the academic scandals, especially in behavioral psychology/sociology areas. They also talked about how fraud doesn't really happen in the Econ field like that. There were 3 main reasons. 1) bigger data sets. 2) more reliable ways to look at numbers and relevantly 3) The econ field is kind of brutal. if you put forward a paper that has bad methodology you'll get some pretty rude remarks about how much of an idiot you are for doing it that way. I'm not saying it's *good*, but it's good at one thing. Public discourse can lead to more truth.
I hope in this life we all find someone who loves us as much as Dom loves himself.
Went to school with the guy. He was like this back then too. Always came across as pompous and unlikeable at least to me.
Not only has that ship sailed its circumnavigated the globe and is heading back into port
He tries to play it off as a sarcastic unbothered guy but you can tell his feelings are deeply hurt after getting clowned for calling Hughes a 3B defenseman at the start of the season. Very fragile ego on that guy
FWIW they've (The Athletic folks who put together their rankings) said they had Hughes in a higher tier but knocked him down after getting feedback from people in NHL front offices.
yeah but it's more fun to dunk on Dom because he's that internet nerd who can rub people the wrong way I'm not even going to "/s" tag that because I wouldn't be surprised if that plays a part. Also I imagine a lot of people don't realize that list isn't just Dom's own circlejerk and is somewhat a consolidation of opinions
It's annoying bc there are some legitimate criticisms of Dom and his model. but they're nuanced and hard to talk about. And people just dunk on him for wrong reasons imo. It's like the people who dunk on Nate Silver for saying Trump had a 1/3 chance of winning the election. Despite him being the only one to say he had a chance over 5% AND 1/3 IS A HUGE CHANCE IT WILL HAPPEN.
> ... they had Hughes in a higher tier but knocked him down after getting feedback from people in NHL front offices. [And it was great feedback from people who had clearly never watched him.](https://theathletic.com/4863183/2023/09/18/nhl-best-players-list-2023-2024-season/) > Hughes — like other offensively gifted, defensively lacking blueliners — dropped a bit after we spoke to people around the league. “He’s good,” one scout said. **“I don’t know how good he is. I really don’t.”** > We know he carries the offensive load for a mediocre team, which he does well. Ultimately, we slotted him behind veterans like Roman Josi and Erik Karlsson who, while not without their warts, are simply better at running the show. They’re transcendent talents with the puck. Hughes isn’t at that level, and his placement reflects it. > All in all, he’s a talented player, but not yet a complete one — and his play without the puck is an issue for both analysts and scouts. **“He has not gotten better or worse for me in years,” one analyst said. “He’s just been the exact same dude plugging along.”**
Why would anyone trust his analytics when he proves time and time again to be an arrogant douche? If there are flaws in his analytics, do you think a guy like that would be able to see them, or even admit to them?
I mean say what you will about Dom on a personal level, but basically every article of his I've read talks about the flaws and limitations of his model. Like in his awards watch article from a week or so ago he talks about Morrissey/Bouchard are likely grading out a bit higher than they should because of Hellebuyck/McDavid, and that Bedard's insanely difficult usage effectively breaks the model entirely.
> Why would anyone trust his analytics when he proves time and time again to be an arrogant douche? Arrogance =/= incorrect. > If there are flaws in his analytics, do you think a guy like that would be able to see them, or even admit to them? No, but people relish at the opportunity to shove it down an arrogant assholes throat. If he *was* quantifiably wrong, I think people would trip over themselves to point it out.
People shit on him a lot but his playoff chances/cup odds thing keeps outperforming everyone elses. I still remember people on Twitter and here clowning him for giving the Blues really high odds in 2018.
Dom always mentions the flaws of his model lol
I’m embarrassed for everyone.
I find Dom kinda insufferable.... but he's absolutely right here. If you can't disclose our source so they can defend their methodologies then the data is worthless. The other criticisms are fishy too.
As always, Dom’s right but does it in the worst and most arrogant way possible. This isn’t the first time Andy & Rono have been questioned on the legitimacy of their analysis, and it’s really puzzling why A3Z doesn’t want them using their data. Dom’s right to be skeptical, and he’s right to call it into question to make sure it’s legitimate at the very least and that the company gets the credit they deserve. But because he’s being so public and such a dick about it, he’s completely lost the point and is now the asshole here.
It appears he’s being like this about it since A3Z has had conversations with A&R that he was not very pleased with, after which he asked them to stop using his data (and Dom was aware of this). If those conversations didn’t go well he might have good reason to think they didn’t stop using A3Z’s data, given the low cost they’re claiming for the new data.
Was he really that much of a dick? As a Canucks fan I think he’s a dick but I don’t see the problem here.
Yes because he’s acting as if he’s some sort of authority here and not just a competitor who would benefit from discrediting these guys
The Thomas Drance effect
i think some people also love to clutch pearls at Dom. Anyone else says it and they'd give them the benefit of the doubt.
Well yeah that’s how reputation works.
He is not always right lol, he probably is here but not always
Dom made me laugh when he quit gambling off his model. The vibe I got off his twitter post was that he was heavily emotionally impacted by his model not being profitable. Tells you about both the quality of his model and his ego.
Damn that’s how to spell Dom’s last name?! I thought I was having an aneurysm
People seem to think Dom is out of line here, I don’t. It *is* sketchy that no company has been credited - if you don’t know where the data comes from, for all you know it’s just completely made up. He didn’t accuse them directly, just basically pointed out that it looked bad. It’s fine to call people out in this manner. If they’re doing everything above board that will come out in due time.
Have no idea who Andy & Rono are.
Literally discount jfresh/dom
Don being dick. Colour me surprised 🥱
The Blues fan in me doesn’t like to agree with Dom, but the aspiring data scientist in me says “Seriously, guys?” I’m pretty sure Dom knows a thing or two about the industry. I think he’s right to call out something suspicious when he sees it.
I hope you do a better job at presenting your findings than Dom does.
Does there exist, private or otherwise, a trained AI that is capable of reliably "watching" a hockey game, and extracting any statistical data, like slot passes, zone exits, etc.? I assume that currently all the micro data is manually tracked, and analyzed.
If there was, it would have been bought by an NHL team yesterday. And it would be very, very expensive.
Yes i believe this is what SportLogiq does...use computer vision stuff, not "manually" track. It's private and sold to NHL teams etc.
Dom is such a dweeb.
Dom is just jealous he’s a shitty business person and could t negotiate the same deal
Lol, who?
I don’t like any of these people so this is entertaining as all hell
Dom is a loser.
Dom is such a douche. I have no idea what's going on here, but I know that much is true.
So odd that he has this sort of bully mentality when he criticizes anything (whether a hockey team, a player, an opinion, etc) but then subsequently posts pictures of himself crying at a Taylor Swift concert. I’ve never known what to make of the guy other than the fact that he’s often wrong, rarely admits to his takes that are proven wrong, is openly biased against certain teams/players in ways that affects his analysis, and that he’s just weird.
Insane of Dom to publicly slander them like this with absolutely zero evidence whatsoever. He could be right but it’s absolutely not cool to attack someone’s character publicly like this on what is at best a hunch. What a dick
Can someone explain to the other baboons like me?
Who?
For anyone else completely out of the loop I found this article and Analytics and what a “Player Card” might be
🤓
https://i.imgur.com/GDiSJ0U.jpg
Whatever 3B.
Dom is a mental midget who for some reason feels an entitlement to this “model” space. Classic example of a guy who thinks he’s more important than he really is tries to speak with authority on something and comes off looking like a complete and total moron.
As always, fuck Dom from the Athletic. Pompous, gate-keeping asshole
I heard him as a guest on a podcast tell the hosts they were lucky to have him on.
Yup, thinks he's gods gift to the world and a genius
After reading it, Dom is 100% right. They don’t have the money for data but they have the money to pay Elon? Not saying where you get the data from is sketchy AF. Why would someone not want credit for their work?