Calgary Flames hire Analytics Specialist David Johnson

While nothing seems to be official, it’s believed that the Calgary Flames have hired the creator of hockey analytic sites Hockeyanalysis.com and Puckalytics.com David Johnson. Both sites have been taken down; only a poem remains –

John Shannon reported the news on Twitter today just before midnight.

Johnson has long been a member of the analytics community creating the wonderful (and already missed) Puckalytics and Hockey Analysis. His site was one of the first to implement both Fenwick and Corsi on one website and had data going as far back as ten years. If he can prevent the team from signing a single Troy Brouwer, then he’s worth his weight in gold.

With that being said, some of Johnson’s views are a bit controversial. He has repeatedly argued for relative save percentage, something that has been shown to be a bit of a myth. He went to bat for Kris Russell and his relative save percentage only for it to fall from +1.8 percent to -2.0 percent the next season.

Debates will rage on through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites on the quality of the signing. In reality, there’s no indication as to what his full roll with the club will be and how much power he’ll wield. It never hurts to have a second or third opinion in the mix, but if this creates some sort of weird power dicotemy with Brian Burke, Brad Treliving, and Johnson, then that probably isn’t the greatest situation.

With Corsica.Hockey undergoing renovations, there aren’t many sites left particularly for multi-season data. Firstlinestats.com is quite good for a beta website for what it’s worth and Greg Sinclair runs a nice website over at hockeystats.ca. Beyond that, the tried and true behindthenet.ca is always available.

And of course for the masochists out there, there’s always NHL.com…

by Les Mavus