Alexandra Mandrycky Entering Fifth Year With Franchise
As a teen, Seattle Kraken assistant GM Alexandra Mandrycky joined most of Atlanta in avoiding the local NHL team. "This is a weird part of my hockey inception story," she recalled on the Expected by Whom? podcast. "I didn't actually pay attention to hockey until I was a senior in high school.
"I went to Georgia Tech down the street, but would say I didn't have an allegiance to the Thrashers. I probably was part of the problem that they moved away while I was in college." (The Thrashers relocated to Winnipeg in 2011.)
Mandrycky is paying full attention to hockey now. Just under a year ago, Kraken general manager Ron Francis promoted Alexandra to assistant GM. Back in 2019, data-analyst Mandrycky was part of the nascent Seattle management team which recommended Francis be hired as her boss.
"What an amazing opportunity," she said of the two-plus years before the Kraken would play its first game. "It was this luxury that we could build out analytics, infrastructure, the scouting staff, without the day to day pressures that happen when you're in the middle of a season and you're worried about all the various things that pop up while you actually have a team that's playing.
"Ron would ask, 'Well, do we like this player?' I'd be like, 'Well, we don't actually have a player evaluation model built yet, so I can give you a guess based on looking at different metrics.' But as far as kind of the secret sauce that any organization is building, that takes time to build out.
"And before you can do that, you have to have data and you have to figure out which vendors you're going to work with. And while you're doing that, you have to figure out who's actually going to be on this (analytics) team."
As if all that wasn't daunting enough, the task was complicated by COVID. "Analytically, there was a challenge in that the league was playing in those strict divisions, so there wasn't as much overlap. We didn't really have as many in-person viewings as we would like.
"But in some ways, I think that it accelerated the use of video and data, when a scout didn't have the ability to go see a game live. I think it got scouts a lot more comfortable with using video, whether to supplement or replace a live viewing."
Having said that, Mandrycky lavishes praise on scouts who are once again traipsing all over North America in search of the next hidden superstar. "I have so much respect for scouts, especially ones that are out in the field, you know, northern Alberta or wherever. I don't think I could handle that lifestyle."
Editor's Note: Tomorrow, Alexandra Mandrycky provides behind-the-scenes insight into the 2021 expansion draft.