bukie

I was too busy celebrating my fourth birthday to watch the big game. I was seven during the entire 1985 season. I remember going into the 1986 season basically expecting the Bears to destroy every team, which they did in the regular season. And then they lost in the divisional round of the playoffs to Washington. By a lot. From that point on, I've hated the Redskins.

i understand where you're coming from with these statements, but Detroit is freakishly potent with a pulled goalie. the other night Phoenix outplayed them the entire game, until 1:30 left where Michalek stupidly puts the puck over the boards in the neutral zone and draws a minor. and predictably, Hossa sets up Franzen for the tie and Hank undresses Bryzgalov for the shootout W. not that this anecdote alone means much, but they did essentially the same thing in the Hawks and Kings games, among others i'm forgetting atm. they could be outscoring teams by a wider margin but it really looks like they're coasting right now. I didn't intend that statement to suggest that Detroit isn't good (I mean, even with their efficiency underperforming, they still have the 4th best efficiency), but I can see how it could be construed that way. If I had better information on shots/shots on goal for each team, I could probably run those as sort of a second-order pythag using shots. I just noticed that Detroit and Minnesota were freakish outliers in terms of difference between win production and goal production. In a league where all but 4 teams are between -0.1 and 0.1 in pythagorean difference, Detroit was over .2 and Minny was under -.2.

Detroit is 1st in S/G and 3rd in SA/G (behind San Jose and Los Angeles). Chicago is 10th and 18th. Is there a place that has S/SA (or, even better, SOG/SAOG) listed for all teams on the same page?

I was going to be surprised at how nobody caught on in 1985...until I remembered that you'd have to be about 30 to remember that much...yeah...

It also has Mizzou beating Illinois. Something must be off in his calculations. ;) EDIT: On a side note, I'm also rooting for NW to make the tourney this year, and the combination of a somewhat favorable conference schedule and their performance thus far should be enough to ensure it.

Calculated Power Rankings for the week ending 12/14: 1. San Jose 2. Boston 3. Chicago 4. Detroit 5. Vancouver 6. Minnesota 7. New Jersey 8. Pittsburgh 9. Montreal 10. Philadelphia 11. Washington 12. Anaheim 13. NY Rangers 14. Buffalo 15. Los Angeles 16. Edmonton 17. Colorado 18. Calgary 19. Ottawa 20. Phoenix 21. Nashville 22. Florida 23. Columbus 24. St. Louis 25. Toronto 26. Carolina 27. Atlanta 28. Dallas 29. Tampa Bay 30. NY Islanders Numbers...(spoilered for sanity)

Dallas has not clinched a tiebreaker over the Bears. The only way they can be eliminated is if Atlanta, Tampa and Minnesota all win this week, which is impossible. I did say this last week, btw. ;)

They've done better than I thought. I woulda had them losing to Cornell. Northeastern too, though I still think that'll be a game. The bad news for IU is that the Big Ten's bottom looks better than expected. I had them beating Iowa in Bloomington, but after Iowa's play thus far, I'm thinking that game's more of a toss up. The other teams I thought they'd have a chance against(UM and NU) are probably the 2 most overachieving teams in the conference. People on here make fun of this IU team, but they've done much better than expected. I thought a split between Cornell and TCU would be a good result, they won both with relative ease. Yesterday's game was ugly to begin with, of course, but that was probably only one of two halves I've been terribly disappointed with (the second half against St. Joe's being the other). According to Sagarin, IU has played easily the most difficult schedule in the Big Ten (No. 37 to Michigan's No. 80 then Michigan State's No. 116). That's made them look worse, too. Problem is, as you said, the Big Ten is much better than anyone expected. I figured on 2-4 conference wins. That has become a more difficult goal than I would have thought, but one I still think reasonable. I'm not sure there will be a single game they're favored in, nor a game I will expect them to win. Still, it's college basketball and upsets happen -- especially with a strong homecourt advantage. Based on current (early) Sagarin data, IU wouldn't be favored to win a single game in conference at this point. They would, however, be predicted within 10 points in all but one home game (Ohio State). The other team that's far enough ahead of them to be favored by more than 10 points is the only team they don't have a home game with (Purdue...wtf?) EDIT: For no other reason than I think it's interesting, here are conference predictions based on Sagarin data: Team W L ----------------------- Ohio State 14 4 Purdue 14 4 Illinois 12 6 Michigan State 12 6 Northwestern 11 7 Wisconsin 9 9 Michigan 8 10 Iowa 8 10 Penn State 6 12 Minnesota 5 13 Indiana 0 18

After being the only two internet writers spurned last year, the BBWAA admitted Rob Neyer and Keith Law. In addition, Christina Kahrl and Will Carroll of BP were admitted. Link Finally, some decent analytical writers in the BBWAA.

http://buzzcuts.uproxx.com/sports/american-football/6135

They may not be able to win the division, but they can't be eliminated from playoff contention, since the 6 spot (Dallas/Atlanta) is only 1/2 game ahead of them, and Atlanta plays Minnesota.

But you'd be okay with them trading 7 guys for a closer? Yes, that's exactly what I said. What this thread really needed was a semantics argument.

Wow, the Mets traded seven players for two relievers and an OF equivalent of Endy Chavez (who they traded away in the deal)? And somehow this was a good trade for the Mets? I'd be furious if the Cubs traded seven guys for a setup man.

The thing that makes the ACC somewhat unique this year is there aren't even any below average teams. The worst team in the conference is Duke, which is ranked 55th in the Sagarin predictors. NC State (59), Maryland (64), Virginia (51), Wake Forest (31), Miami (37), Boston College (27), North Carolina (24), Clemson (20), Georgia Tech (26), Virginia Tech (23) and Florida State (21) make up the rest of the conference. Using the ELO ratings, the teams are even higher. Comparing teams evenly top to bottom, or even weighted more to the middle of the conference, the ACC comes out really high overall this year. Sure, no top 10 teams, but all 12 teams are in the upper half of the FBS.

For the people who couldn't care less about the numbers, here's a set of power rankings based on my calculations: 1. San Jose 2. Boston 3. Minnesota 4. Chicago 5. Detroit 6. Vancouver 7. Pittsburgh 8. Montreal 9. New Jersey 10. Philadelphia 11. Anaheim 12. Washington 13. NY Rangers 14. Ottawa 15. Calgary 16. Los Angeles 17. Edmonton 18. St. Louis 19. Buffalo 20. Nashville 21. Colorado 22. Columbus 23. Florida 24. Phoenix 25. Toronto 26. Carolina 27. Atlanta 28. Dallas 29. NY Islanders 30. Tampa Bay

Even more stat geekery... Thanks to Kyle, I started thinking about a possible way to do a pythagorean based on goal differential. In baseball, the Pythagorean expected value for a team is calculated by (Runs Scored)^2 ------------------------------------------- (Runs Scored)^2 + (Runs Allowed)^2 That works for baseball because the average team is at .500. However, as has been discussed, a winning percentage is impossible to calculate accurately, because teams are awarded for overtime losses, meaning not every game has an equal weight. So, I calculated the average number of points per game to be approximately 1.125, or 9/8. So, I decided to come up with a slight variation on pythagorean with the average PPG factored in (which will, obviously, fluctuate from week to week and even year to year). To calculate the pythagorean estimated points for a team, then, I went with the following formula: (Goals Scored)^2 ------------------------------------ * (Total Possible Points) * (Average PPG) (Goals Scored)^2 + (Goals Allowed)^2 ...with the total possible points being twice the number of games played (i.e. a win every game). That produced what I'll call Pythagorean Points (PYPs). This was interesting, but still a little misleading, because there was a variation on the number of games each team played. So, for example, the Hawks PYP was 33.9, while Vancouver's was 36.2, but Vancouver had played 3 additional games, so on average the Hawks were still doing better. So, I took it a step further, and calculated the Pythagorean PPG (PY-PPG) in an effort to gauge the effective point rate of each team for comparison. Very similar to the prior formula: (Goals Scored)^2 ------------------------------------ * (Average PPG) (Goals Scored)^2 + (Goals Allowed)^2 So, finally, I ran PYP and PY-PPG on every team, and calculated the difference between the expected and actual values (a negative value for Diff means they are under-performing their expectation, and a positive value means they are over-performing their expectation), and then sorted the teams in order of PY-PPG (the expected point rate based on pythagorean) to come up with the Adjusted NHL Standings: Eastern Conference Teams Division Games Points GF GA PPG PYP Diff PY-PPG PPG-Diff Boston Northeast 27 42 94 59 1.556 43.6 -1.6 1.614 -0.059 Pittsburgh Atlantic 27 34 87 75 1.259 34.9 -0.9 1.291 -0.031 Montreal Northeast 26 35 79 69 1.346 33.2 1.8 1.276 0.070 New Jersey Atlantic 24 30 70 63 1.250 29.8 0.2 1.243 0.007 Philadelphia Atlantic 26 32 84 78 1.231 31.4 0.6 1.208 0.023 Washington Southeast 28 33 88 86 1.179 32.2 0.8 1.151 0.028 NY Rangers Atlantic 30 38 77 76 1.267 34.2 3.8 1.140 0.127 Ottawa Northeast 25 25 63 63 1.000 28.1 -3.1 1.125 -0.125 Buffalo Northeast 27 29 74 79 1.074 28.4 0.6 1.052 0.023 Florida Southeast 27 27 67 76 1.000 26.6 0.4 0.984 0.016 Toronto Northeast 28 26 84 98 0.929 26.7 -0.7 0.953 -0.024 Carolina Southeast 28 29 71 83 1.036 26.6 2.4 0.951 0.085 Atlanta Southeast 26 21 77 93 0.808 23.8 -2.8 0.915 -0.107 NY Islanders Atlantic 27 22 70 94 0.815 21.7 0.3 0.803 0.012 Tampa Bay Southeast 27 20 63 88 0.741 20.6 -0.6 0.762 -0.022 Western Conference Teams Division Games Points GF GA PPG PYP Diff PY-PPG PPG-Diff San Jose Pacific 27 46 102 64 1.704 43.6 2.4 1.614 0.089 Minnesota Northwest 26 31 72 56 1.192 36.5 -5.5 1.402 -0.210 Chicago Central 25 31 90 73 1.240 33.9 -2.9 1.357 -0.117 Detroit Central 26 40 95 80 1.538 34.2 5.8 1.316 0.222 Vancouver Northwest 28 33 86 74 1.179 36.2 -3.2 1.293 -0.114 Anaheim Pacific 28 33 82 79 1.179 32.7 0.3 1.167 0.012 Calgary Northwest 27 33 80 80 1.222 30.4 2.6 1.125 0.097 Los Angeles Pacific 26 26 69 72 1.000 28.0 -2.0 1.077 -0.077 Edmonton Northwest 26 28 74 78 1.077 27.7 0.3 1.066 0.011 St. Louis Central 26 27 76 81 1.038 27.4 -0.4 1.053 -0.015 Nashville Central 27 30 77 85 1.111 27.4 2.6 1.014 0.097 Colorado Northwest 27 27 72 80 1.000 27.2 -0.2 1.007 -0.007 Columbus Central 27 25 76 86 0.926 26.6 -1.6 0.987 -0.061 Phoenix Pacific 27 26 69 79 0.963 26.3 -0.3 0.974 -0.011 Dallas Pacific 26 24 72 93 0.923 21.9 2.1 0.843 0.080 Interesting data, but take it with a grain of salt, as I currently have no idea how much this fluctuates from day to day, let alone week to week. However, according to the data: - Minnesota is the team most under-performing their statistics, by a wide margin over the Blackhawks and Senators - Detroit is the team most over-performing their statistics, by a wide margin over the Rangers.

The trouble with doing a pythagorean system is it will come up with an equivalent winning percentage, which just doesn't work with hockey. Or maybe it will if I modify the rate calculations slightly and do it based on current points / possible points.

I'm probably in the minority, but I liked the system they went with for a year where they awarded 3 points for a regulation win, 2 for an OT win/SOW, and 1 for an OT/SOL. It was too hard for the average consumer to keep up with, though, on the whole. At least then all games are weighted equally, and teams would actually go for the win in regulation since it meant something extra.

SOLs screw with the winning % system, since it's technically a loss for one team and a win for the other, and yet an extra point is awarded. what I'm asking is why not ditch SOL's, make it a straight up W-L record and go with win %? Because the league still wants to reward a team for pushing a game past regulation.

SOLs screw with the winning % system, since it's technically a loss for one team and a win for the other, and yet an extra point is awarded.

Addendum: NHL average (1.125 points per team per game) roughly translates to earning 9 points every 8 games, or going 4-3-1/3-2-3/2-1-5/1-0-7 in every 8 game stretch. EDIT: I do believe that only the Blackhawks have the ability to go 1-0-7 in an 8 game stretch.

Warning: math geek stuff ahead... I was curious how the average NHL team was doing so far in terms of points (W-L-OTL) per game, since games award 2 points overall for a regulation game and 3 for an overtime game. Through calculations, I found the NHL averaging 1.13 points per game per team. So, any team above that rate is doing better than average, and any team below that rate is doing below average. So, how are the NHL teams doing? Here's the rewritten conference standings, in order of points per game: Eastern Conference Teams P-Rate ------------------------------ Boston 1.556 Montreal 1.346 NY Rangers 1.267 Pittsburgh 1.259 New Jersey 1.250 Philadelphia 1.231 Washington 1.178 Buffalo 1.074 Carolina 1.036 Ottawa 1.000 Florida 1.000 Toronto 0.929 NY Islanders 0.815 Atlanta 0.808 Tampa Bay 0.741 Western Conference Teams P-Rate ------------------------------ San Jose 1.704 Detroit 1.538 Chicago 1.240 Calgary 1.222 Minnesota 1.192 Vancouver 1.179 Anaheim 1.179 Nashville 1.111 Edmonton 1.077 St. Louis 1.038 Colorado 1.000 Los Angeles 1.000 Phoenix 0.963 Columbus 0.926 Dallas 0.923 Some notes based on the data: - There are currently 14 teams playing above average, 7 in each league. Obviously, since just over half the league makes the playoffs, a team is going to have to be darn near close to average to make the playoffs. - San Jose is a clear step above everyone else. There's more difference between them and the second tier of teams (Detroit and Boston) than there is between the 3 seed in the West and missing the playoffs entirely. - There's actually a pretty clear "top 7" in the East right now, all teams fairly safe bets right now to make the playoffs even if they fall off slightly (Washington mostly because someone has to win that division, and they're pretty clear favorites). - After the top 2, the West is pretty up in the air, in general. Even the last place team, Dallas, isn't that far out of playoff contention.

Big Ten teams are involved in 6 of my top 7 confidence picks. Just horrible matchups all around for them this year. And great matchups for the SEC.

My biggest concern are those matchups where one team is clearly, clearly better, but they've already phoned in the season. (like, S. Florida vs. Memphis or ND vs. Hawaii)

Could be the year for NW to make the NCAAs.