ChronicleThere is some certainty in the NHL review camp

I had the pleasure of the past few days discussing at length with former Canadian sports science and performance director Pierre Allard. After the Stanley Cup final in 2021, the latter caused a big surprise by leaving CH to become assistant coach at Red Bull Munich, in the German first division.

Allard will return to Munich next season. He does his classes behind the bench as he has an amazing wealth of scientific knowledge about the physical preparation of athletes, the energy management of athletes and the analysis of the tons of data available. coaches before, during and after games.

He was completing a doctorate (which he postponed) when he decided to leave for Germany. A scientific study he conducted for an entire season with Laval Rocket players, entitled In-Season Session Training Load related to Match Load in Professional Ice Hockeywas published in 2020 at The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

Undoubtedly, Pierre Allard’s exceptional professional profile will eventually get him interesting openings in the world of hockey over the next few years.

That said, during the annual hope review camp, Pierre Allard has played a key role among Canadiens over the past decade. And the observations he made when he was in the thick of the action were very interesting.

This review camp is an important step for recruiters and team managers. At Canadiens, my role is to interpret the results of the physical tests that players undergo and provide feedback to recruiters on the players ’performance.

I am also a member of a small committee that meets after each review camp to think about ways to improve the formula for years to come.explained Pierre Allard.

Over the past few days, sports pages have been filled with articles narrating meetings that have had top team management prospects. This formula is pretty rigid. The meetings only last 15 minutes and some hopefuls spend the whole day touring the team headquarters, wanting to have a more personal interaction with the athletes they aspire to.

Pretty much like speed dating, but with more serious financial consequences .

That’s an exercise that’s not easy. I always wonder how you can evaluate someone’s character in 15 minutes by asking them questions in a room. This way of doing things always surprises me, even though I know there is no perfect way.

I think it’s very hard to get an idea just because we’re removing young people from their context. When a prospect encounters six or eight people at the same time, he or she may be nervous. He may have slept soundly the night before or he may still be thinking about the answer he gave at the last meeting that he was not sure he had structured correctly.

In addition, players are prepared by their agent before participating in these meetings. So they came up with ready answers. In addition to having a short meeting to get an idea, you need to try to decide between what is true and what is prepared.he argued.

Perhaps for this reason, team leaders make special efforts to spend better quality time with the athletes who matter most to them. Last week, for example, CH leaders also went to dinner with Shane Wright and Logan Cooley. And they invited big power winger Juraj Slafkovsky to an extra one -hour meeting one night after the review camp activities.

Ultimately, having a 15 -minute meeting is probably better than no meeting. But it’s true that for a billion dollar company, relying on such strategic extraction on such a short sample is, at best, a risky exercise.

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As for the physical exams that athletes go through, they also don’t provide certainty, if we believe Pierre Allard.

During the week, the dependent children took turns undergoing functional movement tests to assess their flexibility and detect any imbalances in the way they move. They also undergo medical tests and VO2 max testing on a stationary bike with a direct gas test, which means they have to pedal with pipes in their mouths.

The most popular exercises for recruiters will come on the last day, with a long jump, a jump performed on a force platform (which immediately measures the strength of impulses), agility test and bench press pushes (bench press), as well as the famous test. ng Windgatewhich is feared by all athletes.

This fatigue test measures anaerobic performance. It consists of pedaling a maximum of 30 seconds against a resistance established according to the size of the athlete.

When teams get their hands on all of these results, the appearance of a cognitive bias is the biggest risk awaiting recruiters, according to Pierre Allard.

There are sports where we succeed in eliminating cognitive biases. On the other hand, they are still present in hockey. If we like a player, we will choose the tests that a player has done to say that: “ You see, I told you it was good! ” Conversely, if we don’t like a player, we will especially notice trials where he has shown poorly to say that we shouldn’t pick him.

Also, it should be noted that these tests only reflect one day in a player’s life. I always warn recruiters about this. Enough for a player who got sick the day before or had a bad day to distort the data. So I’m especially interested in players that our scouts liked and didn’t perform very well on the test. I tried to ask them to better understand what could have happened.said Pierre Allard.

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During his time in Canadian, Pierre Allard led several collaborative projects with the University of Montreal to find in the ways of science that are likely to make the organization of CH better on some level.

The study I referred to above was one of his collaborations.

With the help of Professor Jonathan Tremblay, from the kinesiology department, we tried to establish a link between the reality of joining the NHL and the results the players got when they participated in the NHL review camp. And our conclusion is there is no test to determine if a player will play in the NHL.he revealed.

However, this study was done before the current camp formula was adopted. By using force plates during the test, we get a lot of very accurate data. The importance of the power of the first two or three steps is paramount in the NHL. I think, over time, because of the quality of the machines used, these tests will allow us to predict whether a player will be able to play in the NHL someday.

In this type of situation it is important to combine the recruiters ’observations with objective data to make better draft decisions.added Pierre Allard.

Hockey, he believes, is on the threshold of a new era that will allow teams to make better use of the massive amount of data they receive.

Meanwhile, team leaders continue to attend the annual review camps with enthusiasm and anticipation. However, the information they return to their luggage must still be interpreted with caution.

I have yet to see a player removed from the selection list because of what happened in the review camp. On the other hand, I saw the players drafted because they showed on this occasion that they have exceptional athletic qualities.announced by Pierre Allard.