The View From Up North: Two Lawyers Chase Their Hockey Passion

Two lawyers explain their interesting outside pursuit to Canada columnist Steve Dykstra.

This is another in my series of columns about lawyers doing interesting things with their lives (other than practicing law).

Have you ever dreamed about running a professional sports franchise? I know I have. In fact, if the Buffalo Bills offered me their GM job today, I would cartwheel my way to One Bills Drive. Sadly, I can dream about it all day, but I ain’t getting that job in the real world.

Meet Ian Cooper and IJay Palansky, Canadian-born lawyers. IJay went to Harvard Law and practices in Washington, D.C. Ian graduated from the Wharton School of Business before attending University of Toronto Law. He has his own law firm in Toronto working mainly for tech and entertainment clients.

Pretty standard day jobs. But, we’re here for their after-hours stuff. As passionate hockey fans, Ian and IJay wanted to do something fun, challenging, and significant with hockey. To that end, they started a company called the Department of Hockey Analytics (the “DOHA”), along with a friend, Dr. Phil Curry, an economics professor.

What is the DOHA, you ask? It’s a company devoted to the new “science” of hockey analytics. The three friends run a website devoted to taking a more refined look at bar room arguments, such as “Who is the best defensive forward in the NHL?”, using statistical analysis. They also dig deeper, however, to ask questions that the hockey establishment either ignores or has never had the tools to answer. For example, does the draft lottery prevent bad teams from tanking to get a higher draft pick?

In addition to all the content they write for their website, they also write a weekly column that is printed in the Toronto Star, Bloomberg Sports, the Red Deer Advocate, and the Raleigh News & Observer.

I had a conversation with Ian and IJay. Here’s more about hockey analytics in their own words.

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SMD: What exactly is hockey analytics?

IJay: It’s like Moneyball, but for hockey. First it involves application of various analytical and statistical techniques to better understand the game. From there you can go in a number of directions: consult with teams, work in media, work with agents to give them insights about the value of their clients so they can get more money for their players, etc. We’re trying to do all those things, and a few others.

Ian: The way I like to think of hockey analytics is that, at its best, you’re combining the tools of statistics and econometrics with the reasoning skills of law and a fan’s context of actually watching games and knowing when an argument sounds right or stupid. So, for example, if the data don’t tell me anything I can make an argument around, I’ve done a math problem for its own sake. And if the data are telling me that Trevor Smith is an NHL superstar I’m probably looking at the wrong things.

SMD: Why do you find analytics so interesting?

IJay: A big part of it is discovering things about hockey that no-one’s ever realized. It’s fun to talk to an NHL GM or media exec and see the look on their faces when you show them something important or interesting that they’d never even considered before. I like the principle of it as well: creatively applying statistical and econometric principles to discover what’s really going on, rather than what often amounts to little more than guesswork or voodoo about “confidence” or “momentum,” or whichever one of the roughly half-dozen clichés most hockey people use to explain things they don’t have the tools to understand.

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Plus it makes people think I’m cool at parties.

SMD: There seems to be a lot of resistance to analytics. Why do you think that is?

Ian: There’s that great Chevy Chase sketch on Saturday Night Live where he’s playing Gerald Ford and answers a question with, “I was told there’d be no math.” I think people don’t like things they don’t understand and many sports guys in particular got into what they’re doing because they weren’t the keeners at the front of math class. That doesn’t mean they’re all a bunch of dummies (which fans and the press assume every time their team has a bad season). But it does mean this isn’t where their passion lies. And now, through some cruel trick of fate, math class is chasing them.

IJay: Yeah, it’s a combination of the “Moneyball” phenomenon where some of the old guard are threatened by it because they don’t understand it and they know they can’t compete with a Ph.D. economist like Phil, and the fact that most of the people in the hockey establishment don’t really get it. For example, I interviewed to be the Director of Hockey Analytics for an NHL team about 8 months ago. There were four of us, two billionaire hedge fund managers who owned the team, a hugely respected NHL GM, and me. The problem was that the hedge fund guys knew numbers but not hockey and the GM knew hockey but not numbers. Plus it became pretty apparent that this old-school GM was having the analytics program foisted on him. It’s tough to get everyone on the same page and, without real buy-in, something new like analytics doesn’t go anywhere.

SMD: Do you see a day when hockey analytics is both widely used and accepted?

IJay: The question isn’t if; it’s when. And the answer is: pretty soon.

Ian: I think it’s already happening. In Toronto we’ve got SAS running bus ads proclaiming themselves as the official hockey analytics provider of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The world’s largest privately held software company (and one that’s considered to be among the best run companies in the world) was anonymous to the general public for decades, and now they’re piggybacking off their contribution to the Leafs’ pathetic 2014-15 season? I think acceptance is pretty much here!

SMD: You have busy lives with careers and families, how do you divide up the work?

IJay: So far it hasn’t been a problem. We’re all passionate about analytics and our enterprise and everybody pulls his own weight. If one of us is busy with his day job the other guys pick up the slack. It’s not a hockey dressing room, but we’re still a team. A pretty nerdy team (maybe we’re “stathletes”?), but a team nonetheless.

Ian: We usually designate one person to write the column each week, but everything is “peer reviewed” and Phil does the heavy lifting on any complex analysis. So far it’s been working nicely.

SMD: In a realistic world, what do you think you will be doing with the Department of Hockey Analytics in five years?

Ian: I think a lot of lawyers take the benefits of practicing law for granted, and now that I have my own practice, I no longer do that. To be completely blunt, I’ve eliminated the most annoying bits of being a lawyer. I like my clients, and I don’t have some larger firm that gets in the way of working with them in a way that makes the most sense for both the client and me. So I expect I will be continuing with my law practice and thinking about how to do more things with the Department of Hockey Analytics. In addition to syndicating the column, we’ve been doing a monthly appearance on the NHL Network on SiriusXM. We’d like to expand the reach of what we’re writing about and also do more media appearances. So more radio and hopefully at some point TV. We’d also love to really dig in with a team and start applying our work in the laboratory of the real world. We’ve had some serious conversations at all levels (NHL, NCAA and Canadian Major Junior), so ideally some of those turn into consulting engagements.

SMD: Anything else interesting you want to share about analytics or your career path?

IJay: It’s been fun. Not that being a lawyer isn’t just a rip–roarin’ time 24/7. But I’ve gotten to meet a lot of players, coaches, GMs, TV execs, sportscasters, etc., and I’ve gotten a glimpse behind the curtain. It’s not always pretty to see, but it’s not the kind of thing most people get to do with something they’re passionate about.

That’s the View From Up North. Have a great week.


Steve Dykstra is a Canadian-trained lawyer and legal recruiter. He is the President of Keybridge Legal Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm that places lawyers in law firms and in-house roles throughout North America. You can contact Steve at steve@keybridgerecruiting.com. You can also read his blog at stevendykstra.wordpress.com, follow him on Twitter (@IMRecruitR), or connect on LinkedIn (ca.linkedin.com/in/stevedykstra/).