I too find myself wondering about decisions and hypothesizing what I would have done as a GM/coach. However, when I am truly perplexed by a move I often can’t help but think that there is something missing that I fundamentally don’t understand (probably due to imperfect information).

Take for example the blockbuster trade that occurred in December 2005 – the Boston bruins traded away one of the league’s best players (Joe Thorton) to the San Jose Sharks for three players (Marco Strum, Wayne Primeau, Brad Stuart). At the time, Boston fans were outraged – as you would expect them to be. However, the medium term outcome (April 2009) is that currently both Boston and San Jose won their conferences and are expected to meet in the Stanley Cup finals. If fans’ opinions had more weight this trade would have perhaps never gone through and these two teams may never have experienced the success they have seen recently.

In order to be effective the input that fans would be generating would need to be complemented by increased transparency and information sharing from players (player blogs), team management (financial information) and coaches (long and short-run coaching strategies). This would ensure more meaningful fan input. Then the question would become: is the value added from this input offset by the potentially reduced competitiveness of revealing this type of information?