Photo Credit: Derek Drummond

Earlier this week, I read an interesting story by Frank Seravalli on TSN.ca on Mike Babcock, Phil Kessel and the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is a good read for anything interested in how coaches think. For me, it also illustrate another way analytics could be employed to make a coach’s life a lot easier and take out some of the guesswork inherent in the job.

It was not too surprising to hear that Babcock was already thinking about how to get the most out of his team this season while on vacation, but I am very curious about his thought process behind how best to replace Phil Kessel. But before we start thinking about how to replace Phil Kessel (or his production in aggregate), we need to start thinking about how we are to measure a Phil Kessel’s offensive contribution.

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