SALT LAKE CITY -- With competition continually rising and organizations looking for any edge they can get, analytics have become a massive part of professional sports over the past decade.
Utah Hockey Club general manager Bill Armstrong has seen that trend as well and is heading to the internet to find new ideas and a new contributor to his analytics team.
Utah announced Tuesday it is hosting a “Summer Analytics Challenge,” which gives participants an opportunity to earn a part-time, remote, paid internship with its analytics department for the first half of the 2024-25 season.
“We are excited to engage analytical minds through the Summer Analytics Challenge that provides the opportunity to become involved with our organization in a unique way,” Armstrong said. “We look forward to seeing the great creativity and ideas challenge participants submit.”
Participants in the challenge are being asked to pick a hockey topic of interest to analyze and submit a report that provides detailed analysis on their subject. The top submissions will get to report their findings to Armstrong with the winning candidate being selected soon after that.
Almost everything on the ice can be analyzed now, ranging from how well a team or a specific player is doing on the power play to tracking who’s leading in ice time or where a player is spending most of his time on the ice.
It’s no secret how much analytics have changed the game.
“It's something that's truly growing, and I always say in the world of scouting that different scouts and different eyes see different things. I believe that in the analytical world to be true too,” Armstrong said. “With the young and talented kids coming up these days, they see different, they think about things differently, and they certainly are able to create different analytical models, and that's what we're looking for.”
Armstrong also believes the difference between wins and losses can be found in the data as well.
“We're looking for the numbers that can win hockey games,” Armstrong said. “There's so many different ways to attack this, but we're looking for somebody's best and somebody that can certainly come in and hold their own in our analytic department.”
Not only will the winning candidate earn the internship, it can open doors to other opportunities both with the club or elsewhere in the sport of hockey.
“The person that's coming in as an intern, you never know where that job can grow for you," Armstrong said.
