Ottawa Senators hire Sean Tierney to staff

The Ottawa Senators have made an addition to their front office staff by hiring Sean Tierney, a well-respected member of the hockey analytics community.

Tierney becomes the first full-time analytics person on the Senators staff, a resource they elected not to use during Eugene Melnyk’s time as owner. There’s no word on what his official position will be, but he’ll likely be the first piece to an analytics department in the Sens organization, and possibly serve as the director of the department given his experience.

Tierney previously worked with Senators owner Michael Andlauer with the Hamilton Bulldogs, serving as the director of their analytics department from January 2017 to February 2021. The Bulldogs made the playoffs in three of the four seasons that Tierney was on their staff, including the team’s 2018 OHL championship win, although they would go on to lose to the Regina Pats in the semifinal game of the Memorial Cup. The Bulldogs also won the 2022 OHL championship in the season after Tierney’s departure, eventually losing to the St. John Sea Dogs in the championship game of the Memorial Cup.

Tierney’s most recent work was as the director of hockey services with Sportlogiq, a sports data-tracking company that works with a majority of NHL teams, media organizations, and content creators among other clients. He is also known for his website Charting Hockey, which provided data visualizations for hockey stats. Before getting into the hockey management field, Tierney worked as a teacher, and wrote for several websites like The Athletic and Bleacher Report.

The Senators will hope that the inclusion of an analytics department will help give them an edge on the ice and allow them to make the playoffs for the first time since 2017. They nearly made the playoffs last season, finishing with a 39-35-8 record that put them in sixth in the Atlantic Division, and were only six points out of a playoff spot.