Meet the St. Lawrence Alumni Bringing Sports Analytics Expertise to the NFL and NHL
From the Buffalo Bills to the Philadelphia Flyers, St. Lawrence alumni are turning data into game-changing decisions. Along the way, they’re helping the next generation of Laurentians follow in their footsteps.
On any given Sunday during the NFL season, Dennis Lock ’08 might be stationed in a stadium booth, wearing a headset and helping the Buffalo Bills' coaching staff make critical decisions. Throughout the week, he's analyzing opponents' tendencies, evaluating prospective players, and helping the team prepare for its next matchup.
A few hundred miles away, Jake Hurlbut ’15 is helping the Philadelphia Flyers make sense of enormous amounts of hockey data, ensuring coaches, scouts, and executives have the information they need to evaluate players and make informed decisions.
In Chicago, Joshua Larson ’25 is just beginning his professional career, using data to support everything from scouting and player evaluation to practice performance for the Bears. One of his mentors, Tom Pasquali ’12, serves as assistant to the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, where his background in football analytics has evolved to a role that involves managing the many logistics of keeping an NFL team running smoothly.
They are among a group of St. Lawrence University alumni working behind the scenes in professional sports, where statistics, data science, and analytics have become increasingly influential in how teams prepare, compete, scout players, and plan for future games and playmaking strategy. Others include Jack Cowan ’24, a football data analyst for the Green Bay Packers. Farther south, Shane Huack ’23 is a data scientist for the Dallas Cowboys.
Their careers span different teams, leagues, and generations, but share a common foundation: a St. Lawrence education that encouraged them to explore their interests, apply what they learned from their liberal arts education, and build relationships that extend well beyond campus.
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Getting into the Game: Pathways to Sports Analytics Careers
For Pasquali, the path to professional sports began before he even enrolled at St. Lawrence.
During an accepted student’s day on campus, Pasquali noticed posters displaying student research projects using NHL and MLB data. A sample statistics class and conversations with Math, Computer Science, and Statistics professors Robin and Patti Lock helped solidify his decision to choose St. Lawrence.
Once enrolled, Pasquali found professors willing to incorporate his interests into the classroom. For his Senior Year Experience, he worked with Professor Emeritus Michael Schuckers to analyze the value of winning a faceoff in hockey, completing the process from collecting data to presenting findings and recommendations.
The experience gave him something valuable to share with prospective employers: an example of the kind of research professional sports organizations were conducting.
For Hurlbut, the connection between academics and athletics was less obvious.
He arrived at St. Lawrence considering economics before discovering computer science. Meanwhile, he spent four years assisting the men's hockey team's video coach, staying involved in a sport he had grown up around.
"It never really occurred to me that those two parts of my life, computer science and hockey, could together become a career," Hurlbut says.
That changed when he began working with Schuckers and Rutherford Math, Computer, Science, and Statistics Professor Lisa Torrey through a Summer Fellowship in 2014. The project focused on improving the code behind the Total Hockey Rating, a statistical model developed by Schuckers and alumnus James Curro ’12 to evaluate NHL players.
By optimizing the process, Hurlbut helped reduce calculations that previously took multiple days to just hours.
A year after Hurlbut graduated, Schuckers forwarded him a job opening with the Flyers and encouraged him to apply. The fellowship helped him land the position in 2016.
For Larson, who graduated in 2025 with a mathematics major and statistics minor, the possibility of working in professional sports analytics didn't emerge until later in his college career.
After graduating, Larson returned to St. Lawrence as a graduate assistant, taking machine learning courses while helping as a defensive coach on the football team he had played on for four years. His experience on and off the field, combined with his mathematical training, helped him develop the well-rounded understanding of football and the problem-solving skills that he believes distinguished him in a highly competitive field.
"I think if I had just had the math major alone and no football experience, I wouldn't have been able to break into this field," Larson says.
The Laurentian Connection: How the Alumni Network Opens Doors in Professional Sports
While classroom experiences helped open doors, another common thread runs through these careers: Laurentians helping Laurentians.
Lock, whose own senior thesis analyzing hockey data led to a presentation to the Ottawa Senators' general manager, went on to build a career in NFL analytics. While working for the Miami Dolphins, he hired Pasquali as a football analyst.
Years later, Pasquali found himself offering similar guidance to Larson.
Through mutual connections with fellow Laurentians Matt Dodge ’12 and Dean Petzing ’14, Pasquali was introduced to Larson as he explored opportunities in professional football. The two exchanged messages and spoke about job openings, interviews, and the challenges of entering the industry.
"I think all of us take such pride in being former Saints and being able to support and help recent grads any way we can," Pasquali says.
For Larson, those connections offered valuable insight into a field he was only beginning to understand. He credits Petzing, who works for the Carolina Panthers, and Pasquali with helping introduce him to football analytics and break in to an industry that’s notoriously difficult to enter.
More Than a Numbers Game
Today, these alums demonstrate just how varied and all-encompassing careers in sports analytics can be, especially during critical decision-making moments.
"At its core, analytics is about utilizing the past to help predict the future. We are always trying to predict the future in this business, whether it’s game planning, game management, scouting, sports performance, or team building," says Lock.
With the Flyers, Hurlbut burt leads development of the database and data platform supporting nearly every area of hockey operations. His work ensures coaching and sports science staff can access player performance information within minutes, while scouts can evaluate prospects using connected reports, statistics, and video. Larson's work with the Bears similarly spans multiple areas of football operations.
“You're always looking for little issues in every single area, always looking for a solution to solve, always coming up with different ways to solve it,” he says.
After working in football analytics, Pasquali moved into football administration, where he applied quantitative skills to salary cap management and player contracts. Today, he’s the assistant to the Dolphins' head coach.
Despite their different responsibilities, the alumni agree that technical expertise alone isn't enough. It takes acumen in communication, problem solving, and translating challenging information to stakeholders of different backgrounds to get the job done.
"One of my big rules is that the presentation and interpretation is more important than the analysis," Lock says.
Hurlbut found similar value in the inter-disciplinary skills that now help him collaborate with coaches, scouts, and colleagues who all approach problems from different perspectives.
"Computer science taught me how to solve technical problems, while studying history taught me how to research, make connections between different pieces of information, and communicate a clear argument," he says.
A New Generation of Sports Analytics Game-Changers
As professional sports organizations continue to expand their use of data, these alumni see opportunities for current and future students willing to explore, experiment, and develop their skills—especially with the addition of St. Lawrence’s new data science major.
Lock encourages students to pursue projects beyond their required coursework and share their research with others. Pasquali emphasizes the value of creativity, original research questions, and a willingness to pursue opportunities outside one's comfort zone.
Hurlbut encourages students to remain curious and continue learning. All of their advice represents important aspects of a liberal arts education and how essential it is for today’s career opportunities and those that might not even exist yet.
And Larson, still early in his career, understands how much persistence matters. After discovering a profession he hadn't known existed just a few years earlier, he now spends his days working with the sport he loves.
"I wake up every day with a smile on my face and I'm just so excited to go to work.”
Lock offers a similar perspective: “There’s not much that compares to the feeling of gameday after a big win, especially in Buffalo. I don’t know any other jobs where a successful work week culminates with a citywide celebration.”
