Domenic Galamini is drawn to numbers — because unlike observations, numbers don't lie.

"Hockey has always been an eyeballs game," he said. "And it's kind of problematic because there are a lot of misconceptions and biases in the way that we assess players."

Galamini, 19, is a blogger, student and advanced analytics wunderkind. He's also the newest weapon in the Hamilton Bulldogs' arsenal for understanding how the team performs.

A first-year math and statistics major at McMaster University, Galamini was brought into the fold after impressing at a pre-season meeting with Steve Staios. The team president saw the potential of the teen's work, having learned a bit about analytics from Toronto's data-savvy executive Kyle Dubas in his previous job with the Maple Leafs.

"We want to be the best in class," Staios said. And that means using all the tools available.

There was just one caveat.

Staios wouldn't stand for the part-time gig getting in the way of Galamini's education. So he told him school comes first, "same as our players."

The truth is the tall, athletic St. Thomas More grad is almost indistinguishable from the guys with the Bulldogs logo on their chests. The difference is he prefers fiddling with numbers to slinging pucks. Always has.

"I sort of just gravitated towards quantifying things," he said. "When I was little, I was always keeping track of Eddie Belfour's save percentage. That's when my dad showed me Excel."

Galamini, who got that introduction to spreadsheets at just seven years old, only really started to immerse himself in hockey analytics at 17. He taught himself the field by following people such as Dubas, then the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds' general manager, on social media and poring over the growing catalogue of analytics blogs.

In the two years since, he's amassed more than 4,300 Twitter followers (@MimicoHero), created a website (ownthepuck.com), and developed his own system (known as a Horizontal Evaluative Ranking Optic or a HERO chart, for short) for measuring a player's production and puck possession impact.

Like much of Galamini's work, the beauty of the charts is that they visualize data, making it easier for folks outside of the notoriously insular analytics community to digest. That's similar to what he's producing for the Bulldogs, although he won't get into the specifics of what he's tracking for the team or how.

The west Mountain resident is up front, however, about the value of analytics in junior hockey, where, like in the pros, the field is quickly catching on. At least a quarter of the Ontario Hockey League's 20 teams are now either working with analytics consultants or using analytics software.

"When you have a data set that is, in a way, unbiased, and it has measures that are predictive of future success, you minimize a lot of the errors when it comes to evaluating play and evaluating players," he said. "That's exactly what we're doing — collecting information that we can add to our evaluation of these guys.

"It's not exactly replacing the decision-making process in place, just supplementing it with more information. You can never have enough information."

That's an area in which he and George Burnett appear to agree. Metrics, such as time on ice or scoring chances, are important and powerful tools — the challenge is in understanding how to best deploy them.

"I think right now we're all in an information mode, learning what analytics means," said the Bulldogs' head coach. "We're getting some great information from him and I think we're trying to digest and determine how relevant and how it can help us."