How do coaches and teams use fully automated real-time hockey analytics, and what advantages do they get from Wisehockey data? How does Finnish U20 ice hockey benefit from the Wisehockey platform on both league and national levels?
We asked users themselves to share their insights.
”The real question is ‘how do these data change or strengthen our everyday work’,” said Antti Pennanen who was the Finnish national U20 ice hockey team’s head coach in 2020–2022. He has a couple of years’ experience of using the Wisehockey platform in his work, and longer experience coaching young hockey talents.
Pennanen believes that digitalization streamlines everyday training and coaching and saves time – when it’s done right. Modern tools must be harnessed for the right purposes, he reminds.
Game day routine with Wisehockey
How do you incorporate a tracking system in your everyday game routine? It is surprisingly simple in practice.
On the spot, arena personnel only need to make sure that players are wearing tracking chips and that game pucks are ready before the game. Even though the pucks are equipped with smart chips, they can be put in a freezer or a bucket of ice to cool off before the game just like regular pucks.
Team Manager of KalPa U20 Markku Keinänen described a typical game day: ”At first we check that every player is wearing a tracking tag in their gear. An hour before the game begins, we check the pucks, and when the warm-up starts, we check the player tags. When the game has started, we check in the monitoring tool that everything is working.”
Because the Wisehockey system is integrated with the league interface and arena match clock, calculating statistics starts automatically and independently. After the game, arena staff only need to store the pucks.
“After the game, we share a summary of the game with players as a PDF. The material offers statistical data to both coaching team and the players,” Keinänen concludes. “The instructions are clear, and if needed, we quickly get support from Wisehockey.”
“All-encompassing, fast and reliable” analytics tools
”Knowledge-based management is part of ice hockey,” Antti Pennanen explained. This is where accurate data from many fields becomes crucial: coaches track test results, analyze goals and goal scoring situations, and dive deep into player-specific analysis and statistics. The Wisehockey analytics platform is “all-encompassing, fast and reliable”, which is why Pennanen finds it useful for this purpose.
Also in the Finnish U20 series, team management and coaches have welcomed Wisehockey data as a part of their everyday routines.
“As added value, coaches get more tools that assist player development and support or question their own views on the game,” Team Manager of Lukko U20 Joonas Järvenpää said. And the coaches are not the only ones who are keen on looking at the data. “Players are extremely interested in their own statistics, and they view them actively after games.”
Wisehockey supports collaboration between league clubs and national teams
The Wisehockey sports analytics platform has been used in the Vierumäki Training Center, home of the Finnish national hockey team, since 2019 with good results. The Finnish hockey league Liiga has been using the Wisehockey platform league-wide since 2019, and the real-time analytics are actively used also in Finnish U20 and junior games and training.
As the 2022 U20 ice hockey world championships are approaching, the Finnish national team’s coaches can also use the data gathered with Wisehockey in preparations and coaching for one of the biggest tournaments of the year.
