The tyranny of metrics

I’m passionate about sport.  I love the game of ice hockey.  I love sports science.  Although I operate a private facility, we use numbers daily.  We use graphs and displays daily. I’m not against being objective.  Our profession is currently operating in an interesting time.  The technology/metric craze is upon us as well as the need for coaches to believe they must possess high level statistical/graphical skill sets.  Perhaps this is the new norm?  Perhaps the speed at which the trend continues will only pick up pace?  I’m not against it, selfishly I love to study statistics and learn relevant technologies. However, I believe we need to recognize some underlying assumptions being made and the potential unintended consequences of how our profession may be viewed by the end user, the athlete, in the future

The lecture titled Metric Fixation is part of an 8-series product called The High-Performance Hockey Masterclass.  I decided to release this lecture as a value-add for those that have supported my work throughout the years.  It’s an ocean out there.  One with plenty of noise that continuously seems do deepen the waters.  How can we search for signal?  What questions should we ask?  What matters?  How should we choose what matters?  How much should we measure?  My ideas are outlined in this presentation.  Every situation is different, but the need to critically appraise and ask the right questions is paramount.  I hope you find this talk helpful.