Calgary Flames HC Ryan Huska tries ChatGPT to figure out how to win - it didn’t go well

It’s everywhere, it’s absolutely everywhere. In perhaps the most predictable news since [insert recent Trump disaster], a high-level sports coach has revealed that he is using artificial intelligence to help with his duties.

But he’s not just using AI to sort out his spreadsheets or tidy up emails... he’s using it to find tactical solutions to problems on the ice.

In a candid moment during the team’s “The Chase” behind-the-scenes show, Calgary Flames HC Ryan Huska admitted to his players that he had plugged a variety of team performance metrics into ChatGPT and asked for analysis of why the team wasn’t winning; it was an unusual move for an NHL locker room, and one that immediately raised eyebrows.

“So I went down a rabbit hole last night after watching this game here, and I put in — do you guys use ChatGPT?” Huska asked while reviewing game videos to understand plays that went right and wrong. It was here that he introduced ChatGPT to the chat.

“I put in five games,” he told his players. “I gave it a bunch of different things to go in there. People’s career shooting percentage, the amount of shots people have taken over five games, projected over the course of a year. That’s where we end up. Which leads to that on the year, 2.36 goals for during the year.”

“For our team in here — love you all, genuinely hope you know that — but we don’t have a 60 f***ing goal guy in here. So we have to be good with f***ing getting things to the net,” he said. “Don’t accept it, I guess is my message to you. People say the Calgary Flames can’t score. F*** that. You can’t score because you’re f***ing okay with it!”

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In case anyone is wondering why it didn’t go well, first of all, ChatGPT is a language model, not a specialised sports analytics engine. It struggles with numeric projection and data modelling. Second, the Flames’ core issue isn’t a failure of algorithms but a sporting question of playing style, emotional states, chemistry and talent mixed together in a group that has to play against elite teams. A bot cannot substitute sport and the innumerable intangibles that make it what it is.

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