Stathletes’ Meghan Chayka Talks Using Data To Your Advantage | Buffalo Sabres

Stathletes’ Meghan Chayka Talks Using Data To Your Advantage | Buffalo Sabres

Megan Shake is with us. She’s been with us on many a game nights so far this year. And we’re diving in on hockey and non- hockey today with Megan from Statley. Hi Megan. How are you? Great. How are you? We’re really good. You’ve been to Fermentes in Pittsburgh, right? You’ve Have you been to that? Oh my goodness. Duffer loves it. There we go. On the list. On the list. Okay. This is a this is a growing list. Now, when you are traveling, what’s your go what’s your go-to food type in every every big city? That’s a good question. I mean, I’m actually currently traveling. So, I’m in Calgary. I’m at the USA CHL uh prospects challenge. I’m actually going to Lethbridge this afternoon. The second game’s tonight. If I’m in Calgary, you have to go for Alberta beef. I think the same in Edmonton, right? So, I’m always looking for steakous. Uh Vancouver sushi. Uh Toronto, I feel like there’s a little bit of everything. Toronto Buffalo Wings maybe. Um, Montreal. I mean, Montreal is one of the best. I think it has the number one rated restaurant in North America right now if I’m not mistaken. Oh, wow. That lie. Or is it like mean like little little bunny? Little rabbit. Uh, Lul. Yeah, the rabbit. Yes. Yes. Totally. I’ve never been there. Oh, this is going to be a new place for me to go. Neither have I. I’ve tried. So, if anyone is watching, who do we know? Who do we know that can get us? Yeah, I went to Oh, what was that one? Um, there’s so many good restaurants in Montreal that I went to at Four Nations, too. So, that was a nice eating tour. Uh, New York obviously has great restaurants as well. So, anything from Italian to Yeah, I try everything in New York. And don’t sleep on Chicago. Chicago, of course, deep dish pizza, steak houses as well. Yeah, I see. Like I’m I I’m boring. I go to like the the the the regular maybe chain spots. I need to like when Duffer and I are going to be in Seattle and whatever. Duffer, do your research. We got to hit a good spot in Seattle. Maybe go down the market or something. The market sounds appealing. Sadly, there are no concerts that night, Marty. So, you are stuck with me as a dinner date when we get there. Okay. We can find something to do. Um, you know, Dad Duffer loves his music. Maybe like like you talk about your food, Megan Duffer, that’s the music side of it. There’s always something going on. Great. Uh just quickly before we touch on the league and the Sabres, how was that CHL top prospect NTDP game last night? Be surprisingly the NTDP like came through and and won that one. It was interesting. And I think the reason they won is defensively they were so strong. They kept the CHL out of the middle. The CHL actually had a lot more shot attempts than them. I think it was like 80 to 40. Um, but the NTDP really took away any high quality chances and their goalender played extremely well. Um, it looked like they were just holding on there a little bit at the end as the CHL was playing together a bit more as a team. You know, that’s a tough part, right? The CHL doesn’t play together. The NTVP does. So, there was some learning curve, let’s say, for the CHL settling in, but you can’t give anything um take anything away from USA. They played an extremely well defensively structured um there were no breakdowns when there were they knew who had coverage. Uh and it seemed like the CHL was scrambling a little bit right when they would like lose grasp of the game and there was a lot of like transitional neutral zone breakdowns for the CHL that led uh in the back of the net unfortunately. Yeah. Or fortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, Megan, instinctively based on your ongoing research, we’re a quarter of the way into the season. So, just like instinctively when you see Buffalo at Pittsburgh tonight, like what what are you thinking without diving whole, you know, into into all the all the numbers that you crunch? Like just on the surface, what are you thinking of? On the surface, I’m looking at special teams. So, Pittsburgh has the best power play. Sabres have the best penalty kill. So, I love that matchup and I hope that they’ll neutralize each other, but then also, you know, uh you want to see a bit more out of Sydney Crosby. I think that’s what everyone wants to see in this sort of, you know, last few years he’s playing 86 career points against Buffalo. So, I’m assuming that he has a big game and Sid the kid, it doesn’t seem like he’s slowing down, right? It’s he’s kind of this ageless wonder that uh is very efficient, right? He can win battles. He’s behind the net all the time, makes great passes, plays, shows up on the scoreboard. Um, and I think they’ve been like 47 196 versus the Sabres. So, yeah, it’s tough with Pittsburgh. They on on the paper, you know, they look like an aging core and have had struggles. Um, but Eric Carlson early in the season said that like our coach doesn’t demand anything more than what we’re good at. And I think that’s sort of the framework that I’d see them rolling in to the Sabres is you have to expect them playing to their strengths. So if you can neutralize that and score off the rush, get some net run presence, get, you know, a bit of that those easy goals for the Sabres, you have a good chance, but there’s always that Sydney Crosby sort of looming behind the net. Yeah, Sid, the kid, um, I could never stop him. It was so frustrating. So maybe that’s why he felt confidence against the Sabres because I I I fueled his confidence early in his career. Maybe that was the problem. But but Tate Thompson has a sixgame goal streak going on looking for seven. Saw Jason Robertson last night get to seven and he’s hot. Maybe playing his way onto an Olympic team. Do you think Taige is maybe gathering some of that momentum maybe for Team USA as well? I think he should, especially with how hard of a shot he has. He gives them a lot more optionality. I was actually shocked that he didn’t make the four nations and I think that’s a bit of the do you pick the player or a team, right? I think sometimes people are clouded in their decisions based on the success of teams versus the style of players and who will actually help push them forward. There’s actually only been two Sabers that have had fiveame goal streaks and Ta is now one of them. Do you know who the other one is, Marty? uh like on the team right now or no all his all time. Well, we talked about it the other day, but that recently was Palmanville at a six game, I believe, right? Was that Well, two. So, Tas had two now. He had one of them. Oh, the multiple. Yes, multiple. Okay. Uh man, I Duffer, you you quizzed me the other day, but we didn’t talk about multiple six games. No, we didn’t. I would go with Perau. Oh, okay. Was one of those those guys that had you know the the he had what seven gamers or so Miro Miro and McGillni and Felino have eight gamers. But the fact that Miro to your point Megan had two of them a six and an eight is is remarkable. And it it’s funny because it does it it when you say that Megan it it it draws everybody back into that era where everyone talked about Hashik and almost nobody else on the team. Right. And yet and yet every year there was one guy who was a little further ahead on the scoring list but never enough seemingly to be among the league leaders and it was always Mero Chitan. So it is kind of crazy how that how that comes around at a time like this. Now, we wanted to do this. He did win a cup, Mero. He won a cup and you know, yeah, exactly. Yeah. We wanted to dive in, Megan, with you just on like obviously you project all of this numerically, statistically, almost organically, like it it just comes off the tongue so easily and efficiently for you. We want to know like where did this all begin? like when did you dive in and and have this love for all of this that that is now like a big part of your day-to-day career? That’s a great question. I don’t think it happened overnight. I mean, people always like to think success is sort of immediate for people. For me, I was always playing sports growing up. Uh knew a lot about baseball specifically. So, when I looked at hockey, there wasn’t a lot of data. I didn’t really understand how they quantified the game. My brother was, you know, playing AAA. He was coached with people like Ted Nolan and played with Jordan Nolan growing up in the St. Catherine’s area. So there was, you know, 4:00 a.m. wakeups and I was always at my dad sometimes coached too. So always part of the process of hockey and preparation and was in university uh did a lot of like quantitative subjects and doing a lot of modeling and that sort of stuff in the background too with you know math and stats. So it was just sort of a natural like why can’t people quantify hockey better. Um and then dipping more into like the software of why now can we not um scale it. So not just do a you know a player or a team but do an entire league. So we work with the NHL we do every game every night. uh AHL, ECHL, um CHL, which is why I’m out here uh doing some of that stat breakdowns and thinking about uh hockey as a whole, providing better, more transparent data so that people can really understand what makes some of the players so great that don’t just end up on the box score, right? Like what’s a good shutdown defenseman? Uh why is that goalender so magnificent on some plays then less in others? So kind of like the strengths and weaknesses and also just like the the dynamic of the game like how you can win better. Um and you see that with like you know people carrying in the puck more or uh more cross ice passes. Um a lot of people have figured out how to increase the quality of their shot their expected goal by looking into the data in a lot larger samples. So yeah, we built software um and look to like automate data collection, distribution and then you know use AI too to like unear some different elements that maybe as a human you know you don’t have enough time to do the research to really dig into like thousands of games, millions of data points but you can let software now go through and seek out like what correlates to winning, how do you complete passes better. Um so it was you know an 18-year journey now to where I am. uh we have over 200 employees um and you know and we’re we’re successful in terms of like startups we’re more into like the scale up level but I don’t really want to stop now I want to you know make it even better more seamless more automated especially with how much like AI computer vision machine learning is moving at this point well we got a great question from Glenn that kind of goes to the data and to what you can unheard when it comes to making something more successful Glenn asked a question for Megan how about Beck Menstein on the power play. This guy can finish. I don’t think that the data would suggest back on the power play, but he’s got two goals and four. Uh, but I thought it’d be funny to get what you saw out of Beck Menstein and that beautiful goal against Carolina the other day. It was awesome. And that was He’s one of those players that the eye test will tell you, and we discussed this on the panel, too, that he can be speedy when he wants to be. He was in the top five of any top speed this year. I think he was like 22.6. Conor McDavid was 24.6. six. So, he can move with a lot of speed and intention, but I think he’s looking at a small subject matter and a few glimpses where maybe he doesn’t deserve necessarily power play time, but using him to his potential um you know, whether it’s on the for check or his speed that you know, you know, now with tracking data exactly how fast he is, not just we think he’s fast. Megan, it’s great question. I think that’s funny you said we don’t have that’s a small sample. We can’t look at a small sample. But the more you look at the question, it’s actually really great based on everything you just said about using numbers to project. And Marty says it all the time. If you’re in the NHL, you’ve made it there for a reason. They all have talent. So, how do you take numbers like the speed bursts and things like that and then the finish that we saw the other day and contemplate as a coaching staff and a management group, well, what if we use this player in this role a little bit more often, right? Isn’t that kind of what you’re getting? Yeah, totally. And I think that’s player development. It’s like, do you trade for a different asset or do you make your own players better, right? Do you improve upon the areas where maybe they have glaring weaknesses or do you put them in situations where you minimize those weaknesses with a good understanding of when that falls down? And I think a great example this year for the Sabres is just how good Samuelson and Dene have played together. Right? They’ve been career high, you know, five goals already for Samuelson and Dalene looks to be unlocked with a bit more of that stay-at-home defenseman feel like beside him. So I think those combinations and knowing how to utilize players in the right place, right time, and if you don’t, you know, have that player to fill a gap, look for them on the open market, maybe with the trades, free agency, uh try to find complimentary players in what a salary cap era, that’s hard, right? We even see like the Edmonton Oilers who went backto-back Stanley Cup finals now sitting outside the playoffs. So there’s no certainty of how good or bad your team will be and there’s such small margins that I think you want to use data to really inform what you can make the best roster construction and how you best win as a as a crew because there’s no easy answers and these players all age. They all get injured. Everyone deals with the same problems in the NHL. So that the faster you can figure out the best answer for your team, I think the better off you’ll be. What do you say to someone and I say that sometimes especially when I look at goalenders say he just looks good and you’re like okay but that it just looks good is not quantifying to anything but I’ll say that sometimes like he just looks good like ta at center right now he just looks good um you know do you say okay let’s go to the data or do you still think the eye test sometimes helps leading you in a certain way well I think the eye test definitely helps you dig into why he looks good right? Is he scoring off the rush? Is he using his size? Is it his, you know, are they not giving him his slap shot anymore so he has a bit more time and space closer into the net? Um, so I think you can always like go a bit further and push as to why. So I always ask coaches, well, why do you feel that way? Or what’s what’s important about his game that you want to look at more? And I would dig into that area. But I will say if there’s results, that’s the end goal. So if you’re winning, you’re scoring goals. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how sloppily you get there and some players look worse than others doing it. I’m okay with that too if the puck ends up in the back of the net and there’s not a lot of shots on my net that are high quality. Megan, terrific insight today. We look forward to seeing you on game night real soon. I will see you on Friday. [Music]

Stathletes’ Meghan Chayka joined the Buffalo Sabres’ show, Sabres Live, with Brian Duff and Martin Biron on November 26, 2025. They discussed what to expect in tonight’s game vs the Pittsburgh Penguins, Buffalo Sabres’ forward Tage Thompson’s six game goal streak, and how teams can use data to their advantage.

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