Playing the percentages

As a coach, you have a double-edged sword in your toolbox, that not every one knows about. Used the wrong way, it could fool you completely. And used the right way, it could give you and your team a lot of time to work on things you otherwise would rule out as ”bad ideas” before you actually even have an idea if they really are as bad ideas.

I am talking about probability theory and sample sizes.

Penalty killing is perhaps the easiest example to explain how this works. Now and then, you might be playing bad, but getting good results on your penalty killing. The opponents are shooting bad, or your goalkeeper is standing on your head. And it fools you to think that you are playing good, and that your penalty kill percentage is going to stay extremely high for the rest of the season. It will make you continue to play something that is bad, but just happened to work because the sample size is too low.

But then again, it could be the other way around. Maybe you are doing everything right, but the opponents are picking the top corners from low percentage situations, while actually making the most stupid decisions. Because you are forcing them to make these bad decisions. If you are not thinking probability, you might end up throwing a great penalty killing idea down the drain, when you should have held on to it for your life.

To me, penalty killing is all about trying to limit the opponent to low percentage plays. How you do that? Well, that is a story for every one to find out. There is already many tactical ways of approaching the penalty killing situation. In floorball, you will see systems of all sorts. The most important thing to me, is not to just try to mimic them. But to understand how they can limit the opposition from high quality chances. Right now, you can play a diamond 1-2-1-system, you can play a 2-2-box, all sorts of 3-1:s with man-man tendencies and big shot block responsibilities. You will see teams pressuring hard, and teams standing back. That means, that once you have figured out how you think that you would want to limit your next opposition from getting big time scoring chances, the tools are there for you.

The tricky part is of course, that you will need a decent sample size to know if your ideas are waterproof or not. Until you have that sample size from games, you will have to go with your gut feeling. Which of these ideas are worth holding on to?

In journalism you talk a lot about killing your darlings. This is kind of the same thing. Maybe you have to be ready to let go of one of the ideas you thought were a stroke of a genius, to invest more energy and time to get the players to believe in a thing that at the moment is bugging your teams progress, but in the long run will mean a lot to your teams potential success. I have always been a big believer in ”picking your fights”, and not trying to battle on all fronts at the same time. This is kind of the same. Kill some of your darling, pick the correct fights, and when you sum up your season, probability and sample sizes could be your biggest friend or your worst enemy.

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_{David Jansson}

The Author:
David Jansson (1980) has been the Coach of the Swiss National team since June 2015. Already as a 17-year old, he debuted in the SSL (Swedish highest division) and between years 1995-2005 he had played for 3 different clubs  - Jönköpings, Älvstranden and Pixbo. His coaching career includes two years as head coach of the swiss club Floorball Köniz (2009-2011) as well as four years by Pixbo Wallenstam. He had also worked as the sports teacher at the floorball gymnasium in Gothenburg. He lives in Kloten.