Jim Bob
RIP RJ
How Jerry Forton has helped Sabres' scouting department adapt to analytics, video
With technological advancements, the Sabres can paint more complete pictures of players.
theathletic.com
Fairburn with another solid piece on how the Sabres scouting works between the scouts and analytics team.
That’s why Forton doesn’t buy into the idea that analytics, scouts and coaches need to be at odds with one another. He spent a lot of time in rinks and dark video rooms jotting down information by hand. That helps him appreciate what Ventura’s models can accomplish.
“It’s funny to me when I hear about coaches being at odds with analytics because to me whether coaches will admit it or not coaches were at the forefront of analytics,” Forton said. “Twenty-five years ago I sat down after every single game and watched five hours with the coaches and we marked every single scoring chance and who was in on every single scoring chance for and against, hits, turnovers, puck battles, and everything else you could possibly imagine. The only difference now is analytics removes a lot of the biases we probably had when we were marking all of that information. And they’re able to do it quicker on many more games. Coaches have always highly valued that information. Now you just have to trust and make sure you have the right people so you’re getting the proper information but in more volume.”
Forton said now the most important part of his job is making sense of all of that information and making sure it all factors into the Sabres’ decision-making process. There’s more information and it’s coming from more people, and that’s necessary, in Forton’s view:
“The days of just one area scout or a couple of scouts driving things to draft a player or not draft a player are long gone in the league.”
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