Our Story

Canadian Boys to Hockey Analytics Experts

Mike and Kevin grew up together in Iroquois Falls, Ontario, Canada, a small pulp and paper town located about 675km north of Toronto.  Like many Canadian children, they spent most of their youth playing hockey.  From young ages, Mike and Kevin either played against one another or were members of the same team.  In their final years of high school, they were teammates on the 1994 Abitibi Midget hockey club that won the Northern Ontario Hockey Association (NOHA) Championship and competed against Rayside-Balfour to represent Northern Ontario in the Ontario Midget “A” Championship.

Kevin and Mike thrived academically; primarily in mathematics.  Kevin studied mathematics at Lakehead University.  Mike studied computer science at the University of Waterloo.  Returning to Iroquois Falls each summer, Kevin worked at the local paper mill and Mike worked at the local hospital.  Kevin and Mike were also avid golfers and softball teammates. 
Upon completion of their undergraduate studies, Mike and Kevin remained friends but took separate paths. Mike began a consulting career that provided him with opportunities to work in several major cities in North America and the United Kingdom.  Kevin  became a high school mathematics teacher before completing an MBA at the University of Windsor.

In 2003, Kevin and Mike found themselves living in the same town again; this time Toronto.  Kevin was working for a sport marketing firm.  Mike had returned to Canada to be close to his mother who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  One evening, while standing at the corner of King Street and Dowling Avenue, Mike made a casual comment, "I am not sure when, but I just feel that we are going to work together some day." 
Pursuing separate interests, Mike and Kevin left Toronto. Mike went to Chicago for finish his graduate studies in computer science at DePaul University.  Kevin went to Niagara Falls to work at the Fallsview Casino and then was off to Washington State University to pursue his PhD in Economics.  Over the next few years, Kevin and Mike exchanged but a few casual emails.

In July 2007, attending an annual family golf vacation in Fort Frances, Ontario, Kevin sent the following email to Mike:

"I want to start a hockey/sports analytics business, are you interested?"

Mike replied, "I have already starting collecting data, give me a call."

During the 30-minute conversation that followed, they shared their vision and agreed to start a sports analytics company.  Over the next year, they spent their free time working to create their ideal company while learning the intricacies of sports analytics.  Given their shared passions for mathematics and hockey, these became central to their company's vision.  Simply stated, Kevin and Mike have committed to becoming the world’s foremost experts in applying sports analytics to hockey.

Mike and Kevin recognized that traditional hockey statistics don't accurately reflect each player's effectiveness.  For example, a goaltender's save percentage does not account for the quality of the defensive skaters and it considers all shots to be equally difficult to save.  Considering the limitations of traditional hockey statistics, they focused their initial research on creating improved measures (called SAI Metrics).  As part of their research they applied techniques from mathematics and economics to develop a number of models that can be used to determine how much each player contributes to winning.

One SAI Metric, called the Contribution to Winning Index (CWI) allows players to be compared objectively.  For example, for the 2008-2009 season, if Tim Thomas and Martin Brodeur each would have played 80 games and all other aspects of the game were the same; Thomas would have won 4.5 more games than Brodeur.  The idea behind the CWI is simple.  The CWI is each player’s contribution to winning over 80 games compared to the "average" player. The average player would have a value of 40 implying that if two teams consisting of average players would play an 80-game season, each team would win 40 games.  Any player with a CWI greater than 40 is playing better than the average player.  Any player with a CWI less than 40 is playing worse than the average player.  If a player has a CWI of 45, then if  two teams of consisting of average players would play an 80-game season, but one of the teams had the player that has a CWI of 45, then that team would win 45 games.

Kevin and Mike are continuing with their research in the area of sports analytics focusing on hockey.  The results from their general research will be updated on this website periodically. In addition to their general research, they are consulting to professional sporting organizations.