The rink was one block from the house on 88th Street. There were no parents there, no equipment manager, no tryout process. You found a pair of skates in the garage and you went. That is where this started — not in a boardroom, not in a data center. On outdoor ice in Delton, Edmonton, at seven years old.
For David Aaron, hockey only ever made sense one way: playing against guys who were bigger, older, and stronger. Maybe he instinctively knew a player learned faster that way, or maybe he simply didn't care who was standing across from him — he just wanted to play. Out on the ice, the rules were simple: if you wanted to be part of the game, you stood your ground. If you couldn't handle it, you went home. David stayed. No matter how bitter the Edmonton cold got, or how dark it was under the winter sky, the ice was where he belonged.
By fifteen, the dream was staring him right in the face. He was placed on the Junior A Edmonton Oil Kings protected list. Suddenly, he was sharing the ice and practicing with the likes of Wayne Babych, Harold Snepsts, Paul Mulvey, and Doug Soetaert — men who were either already in the NHL or right on the cusp of breaking through. He survived the brutal full camp and pushed through the grueling intersquad games. But then came the final cut, and for the first time in his life, he experienced the sting of being left off the roster.
At that final cut, Ken Hodge gave him two options: head down to the Junior B Spruce Grove Mets with Babych and wait for a call-up later in the season, or play for the Montgomery Legion Midget AA under the Maple Leafs Athletic Club. Not yet old enough to drive, the logistics of commuting to an out-of-town team made the choice for him. He chose the Maple Leafs organization, stayed local, and kept his eyes locked on the target.
David poured everything into training for the following year's Junior A camp, determined to earn his spot back. But the game has a way of changing in a fraction of a second. During his preparation, a severe knee injury tore through his plans, and just like that, the door slammed shut. He never played competitive hockey again.
Oil Kings camp. Morning scrimmage, afternoon scrimmage, night scrimmage. The ice in that building was different. Hard, clean, fast. You could feel the speed of the game differently in there. It was a magical place. Some called it the Cow Barn. He wanted to call it home.
The best thing Bowman ever did was sit Yzerman down and tell him the points didn't matter as much as the outcome. That is not a new idea. It just never had the data to back it up. David played in an era where you felt this truth before anyone could prove it. Slashing is the proof.
NAIT. Computer Systems Technology. He finished in the top five percent and the department didn't wait for the co-op process — a Systems Analyst hired him directly into NAIT's IT infrastructure before he graduated. The City of St. Albert came looking for someone to build a complex asset management application. They found David. That contract became Infosoft Canada — enterprise software running real-time operations for major events and corporations across North America. The World Track and Field Championships. The Masters Golf tournament. Systems that could not fail when it mattered most.
The discipline never changed across any of it: take a complex system, map every dependency, and build something that holds together under pressure. That is what every client got. That is what Slashing is built on.
David understood player value the way players understand it — not from the box score, but from what actually happens on the ice. The data existed. The engine to make sense of it did not. He continues his advanced data research as a student at the University of Alberta. He has been building systems his entire life. Slashing is the one that brings him back to where he started.
None of this starts without the work that came before it. Tom Awad built Goals Versus Threshold — the first serious attempt to answer the question every GM is really asking: not how many goals did this player score, but how many goals did he contribute above what a replacement-level player would have given you? The tools available to him were primitive by today's standards. The thinking was not. When the build stalled and the direction wasn't clear, it was Awad's work that provided the framework — proof that the question was answerable, and a map for how to approach it.
He was not alone. Eric Tulsky proved zone entries were measurable and meaningful. Ken Krzywicki was the first to ask whether shot quality could be quantified. Sunny Mehta pushed the analytical framework further. Vic Ferrari cracked open NHL play-by-play data and showed what was hiding inside it. Gabriel Desjardins built Behind the Net — the site where that generation of analysts gathered, shared data, and legitimized the work before any team was paying attention. Tyler Dellow, a fellow Edmontonian, ran mc79hockey and did something nobody else had — he combined the play-by-play numbers with video, showing not just what the data said but why it was happening on the ice. These were the people who looked at the game differently before looking at it differently was acceptable. Slashing is built on what they started.
The box score was built to record what happened. Raw goals. Raw points. Plus/minus. It does that job well. What it was never built to do is answer the question a GM is asking when he commits $7 million for seven years — what did this player actually produce, and what is it worth against the cap?
The cap era created that gap. Slashing closes it.
Slashing pulls directly from the NHL's official API and runs every event through a pipeline we built and own — from empty-net scrubbing through our own expected-goals model, trained on raw shot coordinates and the full sequence of play around every shot. Nothing licensed. Nothing borrowed. When you own the methodology, nobody can change the rules on you.
1,047 skaters in a clean database. 508 empty net goals identified and removed. A working scrubbing engine. A verified ROI panel. All of it running before a single client conversation or a single public claim. That is not how startups usually operate. It is how engineers operate.
Not to audit trades after they happen. To show a GM what a trade costs in cap efficiency, in standing points, in playoff probability — before he picks up the phone. The windshield, not the rearview mirror. That is what Slashing is being built to do.
Whether you are evaluating a contract, preparing for a negotiation, or making a decision that cannot be undone — Slashing gives you an honest, independent read before it matters most. Reach out.
REACH OUT