Are Manchester , Vermont and new Boston Bruins coach Danielle Marmer the secret sauce that just fueled the Bruins ’ best season ever ?
C learly the Boston Bruins are living right . No team in the 105-year history of the National Hockey League has ever won more games than the powerhouse 2023 Bruins , and no NHL team before them ever started the season with a female on-ice coach , much less one who learned to win in a small , tightknit New England town like Manchester , Vermont . And while these facts may seem more random than correlated … are they , really ? Maybe there ’ s more to the story .
What if someone ( whose tongue were well-positioned in cheek ) told you that a plausible case could be made that last July ’ s historic hiring of Danielle Marmer , an impressive young Vermont woman who learned to skate and play hockey at Manchester ’ s Riley Rink and won a state hockey championship for Manchester ’ s Burr and Burton Academy , was the catalyst for the Bruins ’ astonishing 2022-2023 season ? What if they told you it could be backed up by science ?
Dubious ? No one would blame you . But consider , if you will , that luck plays a pivotal role in a preponderance of human endeavors , and that sports are hardly an exception . The question is , can it really stand up to science ? How much of a factor is “ luck ,” anyway ? Can it be measured ?
Funny you should ask . At least when it comes to sports and gaming , recent research has shown that luck can indeed be scientifically measured . In his book The Success Equation , investment strategist and sports fan Michael Mauboussin outlines a statistical technique that ranks the five major sports by the relative contributions of skill and luck to regular season standings . And lo , “ Mauboussin ’ s Continuum ” demonstrates that the league where luck comes into play the most is ( drumroll please )… the NHL . More than the NFL , MLB , NBA , or the Premier League . You can look it up , as baseball sage Casey Stengal used to say , and it ’ s quite convincing . So especially for hockey players , there ’ s little doubt that having plenty of the good kind of luck isn ’ t just helpful , it ’ s actually essential to winning a lot of games .
So — at least by certain parameters — luck can indeed be measured , but can it also be “ made ?” That ’ s the trickier question , but the answer might well be affirmative , too . Because if we take this “ making your own luck ” business a step further we begin to rub elbows with quantum physics , which has some interesting things to say about the efforts we make in life and how each action is an essential link in a predestined chain of events . We think we have free will , but that ’ s illusory because every decision we make is part of a chain of events that ’ s out of our control .
So how does all this relate to Danielle Marmer and the making of the hockey juggernaut that is the supremely successful ( and thus supremely “ lucky ”) 2023 Boston Bruins ? Physics tells us that we simply draw a direct
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