Paul Bissonnette

Photo by Michael Wifall, via Wikimedia Commons; altered by author

From the outset, I want to say the Player’s Tribune, conceptually, is a wonderful thing. To have players guest post or answer questions without the emotions of a post-game presser or rigid formality of a journalist interview provides great insight to their personalities. And just like anybody we’d encounter in daily life, they say things we agree with, things we don’t agree with, or things we might’ve worded differently. Take, for instance, today’s “Mailbag” with Paul Bissonnette. A majority of the interview, which were questions from readers, were your general enforcer interview questions: best fight, worst fight, scary fight, do you like to fight, etc.

But then there was this final question, which I can only assume came from Mark Spector:

Bissonnette’s response, his longest of the interview, was chock full of wrong, with plenty of right on the side.

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Sometimes, I hear questions float around about whether the analytics movement has changed the NHL all that much. I wrote about this a bit in my most recent post, looking at player usage, but there’s more to be said. Thankfully, I had a great opportunity to contribute to a documentary for Grantland and ESPN called “Knuckles vs. Numbers,” which focused on the influence of analytics on the reduction of the role of the enforcer. Including myself, you’ll also see interviews with Sean McIndoe (@DownGoesBrown), Steve Burtch, Paul Bissonnette, Colton Orr, and Brian McGrattan. Check it out, get the word out, it’s worth your time.

Now that you’ve enjoyed that, I have some behind-the-scenes anecdotes and information from the experience that are worth mentioning.
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Hockey Graphs

Visualizing and analyzing hockey and statistics

Paul Bissonnette is Wrong and Right

Grantland Features: Knuckles vs. Numbers