Puck management and situational awareness are harped on by coaches at every level, but especially in the NHL, according to Michael Babcock.

Babcock, the Skills Coach for the St. Louis Blues, presented at TCS Live on using data to support hunches, like that puck management and situational awareness are important for players to excel at. Yet just saying that isn’t enough, it doesn’t quite paint the picture.

See if the stat below does:

“In the regular season, there were 5,487 goals off change of possession and 53% of those happened within nine seconds of that change of possession.”

Now your players are all ears.

In this 19-minute presentation, Babcock uses analytics to help support the importance of face-offs, entries, retrievals, blueline stands, line changes - anything and everything imaginable. In the end, it’s all about utilizing analytics to your advantage, which includes working closely with your analytics staff, identifying what key metrics are for you and embracing perspectives - the best idea needs to win.

"If you put yourself in that kind of collaborative environment, good things are going to happen."

Noteworthy timestamps:

• 01:00 Defining analytics and how we use them
• 02:50 Goals for off change of possession
• 05:10 Toronto and Carolina best teams
• 06:00 Game examples of attacking off possession change
• 08:30 Florida and Vegas
• 09:00 Scoring chances: A vs B
• 11:00 PP and PK Metrics
• 12:30 PP Metrics
• 14:50 PK Metrics
• 16:00 Utilizing analytics