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The Lightning's Michael Peterson is an NHL analytics pioneer

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Nov 24, 2020The were in the midst of a second straight season buried near the league’s basement when then-general manager Brian Lawton made a directive that was unique to his sport.It was early in 2009, and the team had a future cornerstone in surrounded by veterans Martin St. Louis and Vinny Lecavalier. Lawton, a former No. 1 pick and player agent, thought about how many times he had been wrong evaluating players. He didn’t think was great coming out of Michigan State, and now he’s a future Hall of Famer. It freaked him out he could be that far off.“We had to find a better way,” Lawton said. “Player evaluation was driven too much by emotion. We had to get another piece of the puzzle.”So Lawton told assistant GM Imran Khan to “find me the smartest mathematician,” a “rock star” in his field. “And explain we have hardly any money to pay him.” Of the 15 candidates, everyone seemed the same. Except one. He was a slender and soft-spoken Texan who wore glasses and a suit none of the Lightning players would have been caught dead in. But he was sharp, owning near perfect score on the math section of his SATs, and humble.“He didn’t know anything about hockey,” Lawton said.But it took less than an hour into a January interview for Lawton to hire him, bringing him right to the coaches room at Amalie Arena and thinking, “I want him involved in everything.”That’s how the Lightning found Michael Peterson, a 38-year-old mathematics and computer science major . Peterson is Tampa Bay’s director of analytics, a position that was unheard of a decade ago when he was wrapping up his MBA from the University of Central Florida. A pioneer in his field, Peterson is involved in most decisions made by , who consults the Texas Tech grad in everything from draft prep to free agency, evaluating trade proposals and — yes — even solving their current cap crunch.Peterson never played hockey until a couple years ago when he joined a local men’s league (he’s a right-shot forward). But he’s one of the most important people you don’t know on the Lightning. Peterson’s path is one example of how Tampa Bay has evolved into one of the teams at the forefront of analytics, a once taboo topic that is now turning into an arms race.“He’ll be an inspiration to a lot of people,” said Bill Sutton, 69, Peterson’s professor at UCF’s Sports Business Management School. “He never played hockey. It’s not like he’s a hockey guy. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. It just shows you if you’re smart and you understand things, you know how to ask the right questions and analyze data, it doesn’t matter. Kim Ng didn’t play baseball, Here’s another one.“(Peterson) is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”Peterson had two loves growing up in Midland, Texas:Math and baseball.His mother, Mary, was a math and science teacher. His father, Walter, was a mineral geologist. But Peterson wasn’t all about the books. He played baseball and religiously watched his favorite team, the Houston Astros. He collected baseball cards, and still does. He played basketball too, but not football.Peterson became a star student at Texas Tech, writing an undergraduate thesis on cryptology (the study of codes, writing and solving them) when no one else did.“He was one of the rarer breeds of students,” said Texas Tech math and statistics professor Chris Monico. “Most of them just went to class, learned what they needed to get the piece of paper. Michael was always a little bit more driven than that.”Peterson and Monico would meet once a week to go over classwork, cryptology, research. But their conversations would end up revolving around sports. Monico had a side passion doing predictions for college football games. Peterson was into fantasy sports, collecting cards and, of course, baseball.Around 2004, they both read a book that changed the way they thought, and the course of Peterson’s career. It was “Moneyball,” by Michael Lewis, a book that detailed how the Oakland A’s used under-the-radar numbers to help build a contending team on a payroll that was a fraction of rivals like the Yankees and Red Sox. To this day, it’s Peterson’s favorite baseball book.“Prior to that, I don’t know that I would have even thought a career like that could exist,” Peterson said. “Just reading the book, that if the A’s and Indians are doing it, then you can naturally expect it to sort of spread to other teams in other sports.”Said Monico: “The power of analytics in sports struck both of us.”Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach asked Monico and his math department to do some projects for his team. Peterson said Leach wanted them to break down what players were on the field for certain plays. But the video quality and camera angles made it impossible to properly track.Peterson’s interest was piqued in how analytics and sports could be intertwined. He planned to do a post-graduate program at UCF in Orlando. His wife, Amanda Lee-Peterson, whom he met at Texas Tech, got into law school at Barry University in Miami Shores, .“My impression was that Mike had a general passion for mathematics, but he was certainly more interested in sports,” Monico said. “And the MBA program (at UCF) became the perfect fit.”Peterson was in one of Sutton’s marketing classes at UCF when a guest speaker came in.It was a lecture on analytics, and how marketing can drive attendance. The speaker had a slide on the board discussing an algorithm and it couldn’t have been up for more than five seconds when Peterson turned to his buddy, Andre Therrien, and said, “It’s wrong.”Sutton overheard the exchange and was intrigued. Surprised. So he told the speaker after class that he had been corrected. Sutton asked Peterson to explain.“He was so sheepish, a real private guy, real quiet,” Sutton recalled. “And Mike just told the speaker that equation, why it was wrong. He had seen it instantaneously off the board. And Mike was right. The speaker said, ‘Wow, I missed that.’”Sutton had a friend who worked for the ’s Cleveland Indians and suggested Peterson and Terrien could help him with a project. The Indians were working on a presentation on predicting promotional effectiveness, the impact of promotions on attendance. Sutton told Peterson and Therrien the model the team was working with, and Peterson said, “No, we’ll build our own model.” They presented their findings to the Indians and were within 8 to 9 percent of the actual attendance.“Mike is a sports nut who just happens to have the brain of a rocket scientist,” said Therrien, who worked six years for the Florida Panthers on the business analytics side. “That combination was pretty lethal for him.”Peterson did consulting work for the Indians and Tampa Bay Rays (putting together an attendance projection model) during his two-year graduate program at UCF before getting that life-changing internship with the Lightning. He’s still a huge baseball fan and long-time Rays season-ticket holder who attends 60-70 games a year with his wife. They saw all six games of the World Series in Arlington, Texas.Peterson’s wife, Amanda, is also a sports buff. Therrien said when he and Peterson would play intramural softball/baseball in grad school (“Mike wasn’t very good.”), she would “heckle the crap out of the other team and umpires using words I can’t use in an article.”“Initially, I was really hoping to work in baseball analytics for a team,” Peterson said. “Then, through talking with a classmate there, we had a discussion where hockey would really be the best path because there hasn’t been as much done in hockey as in other sports.“When I got hired with the Lightning, we had no one working in business or hockey analytics. In hockey, I know it was me and Minnesota had Chris Snow, but there weren’t many more. It was still growing.”Jim Johnson played more than 800 NHL games during his career before getting into coaching.In his final few years with the league, with Phoenix, back from 1996-98, Johnson thought there had to be a better way to analyze player performances and effectiveness other than your goals, assists and plus-minus. So he started tracking scoring chances, sharing info with his coaches, including Rick Bowness.“I’m a big believer in using analytics,” Johnson said. “You can’t get what you want until you measure it. And I think it helps you in your evaluations.”When Johnson first got behind an NHL bench as an assistant with the Lightning during the 2009-10 season, he was introduced to Peterson by Lawton. It was a perfect fit. At first, Peterson was just helping the staff organize, putting stats in spreadsheets so they were easily digestible for the coaches. It streamlined the process so there didn’t have to be as much research. But they focused on scoring chances, in terms of rating a player for scoring chances for/against when he was on the ice (and with whom). They were all given an effectiveness rating, which helped coaches put the best defensive pairs and lines together. The coaches would chart the chances, and Peterson would put in a spreadsheet that would be presented in a way both the staff and players could understand.The rating wasn’t used as the only evaluation, but used as a tool in their coaching.“I never used it as a negative,” Johnson said. “Maybe this line was creating, maybe they were a plus-7 in chances for. Now we can dig deeper into the film and look at what they were doing to become effective against a group of guys they were playing against. Can we use that to help our third and fourth line? Maybe a defensive pair was a minus, but they gave up chances all on two-on-ones. That helped me design a practice.”Lawton thought maybe three to four NHL teams were involved in analytics at the time, with the key being “trying to filter out the difference between measurable and meaningful.” Lawton would ask Peterson at the NHL Draft to evaluate scenarios like:“When is it right for me to package two picks to move up and get one? Is it worth a third and a fourth to move up to 58th?”Then, Lawton said, “It got deeper and deeper in there.”After Lawton was fired and replaced by Hall of Famer Steve Yzerman in 2010, Lawton called his successor to let him know about Peterson. And this is how that conversation went, according to Lawton.“You really have to keep Michael,” Lawton said.“Who?” Yzerman asked.“Michael Peterson.”“I don’t know anything about him,” Yzerman replied.Said Lawton: “You will. Don’t let him go. You’ll be happy.”BriseBois hadn’t heard about Peterson until he joined the Lightning in 2010, hired to be Yzerman’s right-hand man.Yzerman told BriseBois they had this guy. He was smart. He was nice. He had all these degrees. Meet with him and see what you think. BriseBois and Peterson had lunch and BriseBois immediately saw potential. BriseBois had spent most of the previous decade with the and felt there was a role for analytics in their game.“It was nowhere near where it is today,” BriseBois said. “And even today, we’re nowhere near where we are going to be in the future. It’s still evolving and continuing to grow. What shape or form that takes, I’m not sure. The role of critical intelligence, player tracking, puck tracking, that’s all coming. We’ll get a better appreciation for the role that data can play in those tools, can play in hockey management.“If you go back 10 years, probably most teams didn’t have anyone like Mike. The previous regime was ahead of the curve in that regard. Over time, we’ve just been developing more and more projects for him to work on, and over time he’s developed certain expertise and appreciation for the game. We challenge each other.”Peterson started as a one-man staff, but now he’s one of three full-timers; Ken Buker is a data science programmer, with Ben Morgan a statistical analyst. The Lightning developed an internship for course credits at local colleges like USF, which has increased their staff to around eight each season. There’s plenty of work to go around. BriseBois said Peterson helps with coaches at the NHL and AHL level, providing tactical reports or answering any question they may have. He helps director of scouting Al Murray, , with his draft list. Peterson and with contract negotiation and player evaluation. He prepares statistical reports on potential free agents or trade targets, with BriseBois and his staff comparing how the analytics line up with their scouting reports.When BriseBois was hired as Lightning GM in the fall of 2019, I asked him about analytics and he said, “If we didn’t call it ‘analytics,’ if we called it ‘information,’ no one would say ‘I wouldn’t want as much quality information as I can.’” BriseBois pointed out then that analytics is a useful source of information if you have accurate data, sufficient sample size and if it’s relevant. He’d often tell his guys, “Bad data is worse than no data, so make sure the data is good.”“Generally speaking, when people refer to analytics, the acceptance of that information being valuable is no longer in dispute,” BriseBois said. “I’m sure every team is relying on statistics to a certain extent.“I would have a hard time finding an area where (Peterson) or his department are not providing us with some sort of information. Most of the time we’re looking for information, we add it to other information we have from other sources and help paint the picture. They’re not in opposition, it’s more complementary to help us make better decisions. It might challenge our assumptions or it might help us dig deeper to validate assumptions.”BriseBois said Peterson’s strengths are not only his intelligence — “his grasp of mathematics, statistics and computer programming is beyond mine” — but his easy-going personality. He’s funny. And a great listener. Peterson admits there was a big learning curve in getting acclimated to the sport, a process that took years of questions and observations. So when Peterson communicates his findings, there’s a humble nature to it. “He’s not pushy, he’s not arrogant about it,” BriseBois said. “He comes across in a matter-of-fact or humble way that helps get the message across.”Peterson has been amazed how his field has evolved over the years. At first, everyone was “living in the blogs,” where those who created them were eventually hired by NHL teams. AC Thomas (Minnesota), Sonny Mehta (New Jersey), Darryl Metclaf (Toronto), Tyler Dellow (Edmonton) were some of the earlier ones. put together a list of publicly available analytics hires in the NHL.While the Lightning, like many other NHL teams, create and use proprietary data, Peterson noted how useful public analytics resources are and how numbers like Corsi, a foundational advanced statistic that has sparked debate, has proven to be an effective performance measure.“You have to have a large enough sample of data to tell if something is meaningful, that’s just standard statistical process,” Peterson said. “Being able to compare something to another, and trying to tell if it’s meaningful or not, it’s like we’re doing with (COVID-19) vaccines now. It definitely takes a lot of time. If you’re starting with nothing, it takes a long time.”Peterson has appreciated the opportunity with the Lightning, noting how the staff has embraced his work. He said Yzerman and BriseBois haven’t been that different in how they approach analytics. Both keep specifics of Peterson’s work close to the vest; I remember asking Yzerman years ago if I could interview Peterson, and he joked (I think), “Sure, but then I’d have to kill you.”“Steve, I know he has the appearance of one of those old-school guys,” Peterson said. “But he wanted to ask questions and everyone to take in as much info as we could.”Peterson was not one of the team personnel in the bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton for the Stanley Cup playoffs, but he was in touch pretty much daily with BriseBois and his staff, whether it was over email or phone call. Peterson said the most fun part about his job is doing a project and seeing the results on the ice.“That is the most rewarding, to feel you’re actually contributing to the team,” he said.So when Peterson saw his name on the Stanley Cup a few weeks ago for his Cup day at his North Tampa home, it was extremely special. He and Amanda had a few friends over, made some food and hung out. BriseBois said he wished he could have put more than 52 names on the Cup, but Peterson was “very deserving,” a nod to his entire department. When the Lightning introduced the team at Amalie Arena for a season-ticket holder/staff event, Peterson was among the people introduced (and cheered) after the players and coaching staff.He was one of them.“Just so surreal,” he said. “I never would have imagined.”(Top photo of Michael Peterson and wife Amanda Lee-Peterson with the Stanley Cup: Courtesy of&nbsp; Scott Audette / Tampa Bay Lightning)

Nov 24, 2020The were in the midst of a second straight season buried near the league’s basement when then-general manager Brian Lawton made a directive that was unique to his sport.It was early in 2009, and the team had a future cornerstone in surrounded by veterans Martin St. Louis and Vinny Lecavalier. Lawton, a former No. 1 pick and player agent, thought about how many times he had been wrong evaluating players. He didn’t think was great coming out of Michigan State, and now he’s a future Hall of Famer. It freaked him out he could be that far off.“We had to find a better way,” Lawton...

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The Lightning's Michael Peterson is an NHL analytics pioneer

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