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September 21, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg
Edmonton Oilers CEO Jeff Jackson appeared on the Jason Gregor show on Wednesday and said that there would be an announcement regarding analytics “soon”. He wasn’t kidding! The Oilers announced that they have hired Michael Parkatti as the Senior Director of Data and Analytics on Thursday. Parkatti will be responsible for creating and running a new analytics department for the Oilers.
“Analytics is another good tool to use. That’s essentially what it is, and if you have a tool box and you don’t have one part of the tool box, you lost your one tool and you’re not using it, like it’s going to hurt you; so to me, like get that tool box full” said Jackson.
Parkatti has made a career out of scientific data. According to his LinkedIn profile, he spent nine years with the Government of Alberta as a Manager of Economic Research and Analysis and a Senior Director of Economic Information and Ananlytics. Parkatti also spent almost three years as the Vice President of Data & Analytics for Conexus Credit Union, and almost three years as the Manager of Advanced Analytics for Suncor.
Interestingly, Parkatti has worked with the Oilers before. He served as an Analytics Consultant for the team from May 2013 – June 2015. That overlaps with Tyler Dellow’s time in the same role with the Oilers (2014-2016). Parkatti’s time with the Oilers predates Dellow’s. Parkatti received that role after winning the 2013 Oilers Hackathon Contest, which involved submitting a five page submission for a forecasting challenge. Copper and Blue offered a summary of Parkatti’s article shortly after the contest.
Basically, Parkatti created a metric called the Coaching Activity Index (CAI) to measure the extent that coaches participated in line matching, and to find out if a high CAI score strongly correlated to success in the standings (spoiler alert: it did).
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Parkatti also has his own website called boysonthebus.com. He has a lot of fantastic written work there, but of particular interest to me was his five part series on using data to predict the NHL outcomes of draft eligible players.
When we typically think of analytics, we think of the publicly available data that we see on sites like Puck IQ and Natural Stat Trick. The data typically shows microstats regarding the frequency of in-game events like goals, shots, shot attempts, and scoring chances. Parkatti’s work described above shows that there is so much more that can be done with data that we as fans just don’t see on a daily basis.
As Parkatti’s work shows, data can clearly influence drafting decisions. It can influence coaching matchups too. As an example, @Woodguy wrote a piece about how the data showed that Ryan McLeod should have been deployed against the Jack Eichel line in the playoffs against the Vegas Golden Knights because of his performance against elite competition.
Data can also influence defensive pairings and line combinations. I’ve written articles in the past where I’ve attempted to create the best line combinations for the Oilers based on underlying metrics. @NHLSid has released excellent work in devising ideal defensive pairings using data in the past.
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These are just a few of the potential examples of ideas that could be explored by Parkatti and his team. Parkatti’s ingenuity and wealth of knowledge about scientific data will lead to a world of possibilities for the Oilers.
The Oilers have dabbled in analytics before, as we’ve seen with Parkatti and Dellow both being analytics consultants for the team in the past, and with the work of Justin Mahé. This decision represents something more than a reluctant attempt at integrating analytics by the Oilers organization, which is a welcome change in philosophy. Jackson said that “You can build programs where you drive focus on whether it’s amateur scouting, pro scouting, player contracts, like you know, using it to see when guys are at peak performance, all that sort of stuff that you can’t do without the data. That’s where we’re going to use it.”
As mentioned above, Parkatti will be tasked with creating a new Analytics department. Having connections is how many people get jobs these days. When trying to speculate about who might be involved in Parkatti’s team, one merely has to look at Parkatti’s interactions on Twitter, which were abundant on Thursday.
Puck IQ is a locally created hockey data website. @Woodguy was behind a lot of the conceptual work that went into the site. He wrote multiple excited posts about this hiring on Thursday, including one that shone a light on Parkatti’s impeccable fashion sense. Woodguy has a tonne of knowledge and expertise in the field of hockey data. In addition to Puck IQ, he has his own blog where he shares a lot of fantastic insights and analysis. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Woodguy was involved in Parkatti’s new Analytics department in some way.
@OilersNerdAlert wrote the software that helped PuckIQ capture the data for the site. He stated that he has worked with Parkatti for three years in one his Tweets showing excitement for Parkatti’s hiring. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see him involved in the Analytics department in some capacity.
We’ll see how all of that plays out, but Parkatti’s hiring is widely viewed as a fantastic and progressive hire. It’s great to see a man with Albertan roots that was a former blogger (Parkatti contributed to the Copper and Blue blog at one point in time, and he has his Boys on the Bus site) get hired by the local team because of his ideas.
Jackson is clearly prioritizing fortifying the analytics department because the data can provide a competitive advantage over other teams. The Oilers are trying to win a Stanley Cup in 2024, and they are committing to utilizing every possible resource to gain whatever advantage they can get.
