PITTSBURGH — Penguins fans should know that when Fenway Sports Group executive Dave Beeston said there is “no limit” as to who the team will hire to lead its hockey operations department next, they were far from empty words.
The man tabbed with monitoring the Penguins’ day-to-day operations on behalf of FSG spoke with reporters last Friday about engaging in a “robust process” to reshape the organization’s hockey operations department once headed by Brian Burke, Ron Hextall and Chris Pryor, all of whom have been fired. If anything can be gathered from FSG’s run of over two decades in professional sports, it’s that analytics are likely to factor heavily into that search.
FSG’s emphasis on statistics stems from its first ventures. John Henry, founder and principal owner of FSG, once tried to lure then-Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane for the same role with the Boston Red Sox. When Henry struck out with Beane, famous for his role in the book and later movie adaptation of “Moneyball,” he pivoted to another forward-thinking baseball mind in Theo Epstein, then just 24 years of age, for the position.
