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“They don’t know anything,” Laraque says, but that’s under-selling contribution of analytics

This infrom former NHL Georges Laraque, talking to Bob Stauffer of Oilers Now, defending Edmonton Oilers forward Milan Lucic and blasting analytics bloggers who downplay the physical factor in hockey. Stauffer suggested to Laraque that analytics-based bloggers don’t like tough guys but one of the reasons the Oilers were so healthy this year was because the team had tough players like Lucic and Patrick Maroon playing regularly.

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That’s when Laraque launched a wicked overhand right of a rant: “You said some of the people in the media they don’t like tough guys, and they say stuff, ‘They don’t like it, we don’t believe in this and that.’ This is the trend between people that know the game and people that don’t know the game. There’s many people in the media that cover the game that talk about hockey and stuff but they don’t know anything. And you read them and they want to make it look like they do, but they don’t. The stats you just said right there (on the health of the 2016-17 Oilers) gives you an indication right there of what’s been going on with that team. Why do you think McDavid got 100 points this year? Do you see how much room he’s getting? Yes, there’s a little bit of stuff there and there sometimes, but most of the time he was healthy because of that presence. But you know what those guys are doing, those media? They are going with the wave of…”