Tortorella working on new analytics package

John Tortorella was on Tampa Bay’s 620 WDAE on Friday morning.

On what it’s like for a coach to hit the reset button with a year off:

"It gives me an opportunity to step back and watch a lot of games. One thing that I’ve kind of jumped into with all this new talk about analytics; myself and Mike Sullivan are analyzing every goal scored last year and last year’s season,  5-on-5 goals, and trying to figure out an analytics package that will help. Not just what’s out there, which is some good stuff, but trying to do our own little thing there. So that’s kind of kept us busy and kept us in the game as we’ve gone along the way here.”

On Charles Barkley’s comments on analytics compared with a gut feeling, and if analytics are a tool – or if you still coach from your gut based on what experience tells you:

“It’s a great question, and it’s great how you put it because when I was with my staff last year, and all of this has kind of bombarded us a little bit... We had a really good analytic package. We had a guy, Jonathan Wall in Vancouver, and some really good stuff analytic-wise.

“But this is not baseball. And I think this is kind of where it grew from. You have to be really careful not to let it control you in analyzing players, analyzing your team. I think it helps you in a lot of different areas to maybe affirm some things or maybe you have you look at an area you may improve. But if you lose your stomach when you’re coaching in the National Hockey League or the game of hockey, I just don’t know if that’s the proper way of going about it.

“Listen to me. I’m without a job right now. So who am I?

“But that’s just the way I feel about it, and I feel strongly about that. You can’t lose your stomach as you go through this because this is a different-type game. It’s just so creative. You don’t want to get locked in on numbers all the time. And to me, the best analytic is – and it tells the story of the game – are scoring chances for and against when you analyze those the next day as far as what your team did in those areas. Because you’ll learn a lot about all the areas of the game through those scoring chances for and against.”

Source: 620 WDAE/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey

Related: Tortorella: "Quite honestly, I deserved to get fired" by Canucks