squishyx

So at this point the arena is happening no matter what? I suppose that's a positive sign for the NHL's prospects in Seattle, although you'd still need an owner and, as fiesty said, the Hansen/Ballmer group won't be all that interested in trying to bring in the Coyotes (or any other team) without first having an NBA team in hand.

I think it's possible, probably a long shot now. If the group felt that they were going to secure 'a' NBA team in the near future they might continue. Arena's take time to build so this would avoid having to play at Key Arena for a couple years which was part of the original plan. I don't think it's likely anymore though given recent events. The immediate prospects for Seattle getting an NBA/NHL team are dashed given yesterdays relocation vote.

I do think think there is hope though, this guy was willing to up the ante $100m in the last week before a couple key votes, and he is trying to get a 20% share of the Kings. His ownership group is obviously very determined and that bodes well for Seattle.

http://www.sonicsare...sonics-faithful

...plus there is a report they have a back up deal with the Maloofs to acquire 20% of the franchise and then essentially pull a "Clay Bennett good faith" deal and move the Kings in a year or two like he did to Seattle. Though reports seem to say that the NBA will direct owners to not approve any sale to the Hansen, Ballmer group no matter what.

Off topic but I thought it was pretty ironic that Clay Bennett was on the board that unanimously voted to reject the move to Seattle. That guy must have gotten some really bad coffee in Seattle once.

http://www.sonicsare...back-to-seattle

A few days old, but looks like they upped their bid 75m and "we have also guaranteed to the NBA that the Franchise would be a revenue sharing payer in all years in Seattle."

I don't have much of a stake in Seattle getting franchises, I go out there only once a year, but it's hard to root against this guy (apart from current Kings fans of course).

Wasn't the push for a new arena in Seattle contingent on the Kings moving up, though? Key Arena is not suitable for NHL hockey and at best it could be a temporary home for a basketball team if necessary. So if there's no new arena, there's no place for the Coyotes to go, and even if Seattle is somehow guaranteed to get the NBA in the future, we don't know when that will be. All of this means that by the time Seattle is a viable option for the NHL, the Coyotes will probably be off the table and we're left looking at either expansion or wondering which market is the next to fail.

 

Well, it's not good. But from the sounds of it Hansen isn't ready to give up buying the Kings yet. They have also made some headway into the new arena and he might not walk away so fast.

First off, goal differential isn't absent Fenwick Close or score-adjusted Fenwick or whatever microstat you choose to use - they're correlated with one another.  Teams that have a good FenClose tend to have a good goal differential.  
 
Second, your argument about goal differential was like saying 'Hey guys, I sorted by points and I found that most years, the teams with a lot of points make the playoffs and the ones without don't!'.  I mean, yeah, occasionally a team has a decent goal differential and misses out on the playoffs because of a poor shootout record or something like that (or vice versa), but yeah, if you score more goals than your opponents, you will win more games than them.  If you are +30 goal differential in a full season you are basically a lock to make the playoffs.  I mean, you could sort by points and raw Corsi and almost certainly find the same thing.
 
http://blogs.thescor...y-told-the-cbc/
 
This one's probably better, regarding PDO, although it's old:  http://www.mc79hockey.com/?p=2996
 
Teams have SOME ability to sustain shooting percentages and save percentages, but it is much smaller than the ability to retain outshooting ability.

But I am not arguing "hey, teams with the best +/- tend to be good teams with lots of goals and points!". My actual argument from my last post is "an intrinsic argument I've always held, stats do not predict future results with enough consistency to be used reliably".

That was reinforced when I was researching your implied argument that Corsi was better at predicting future results then GDiff. As it turns out is absolutely measurable. We can (and probably always will) debate on how much weight we should tether to a given stat, but we can conclusively prove (or disprove) if one stat predicts results better then another. 5 years of season-playoffs data is not that much in the grand scheme of things, but for me it's certainly enough to suggest they are both poor at predicting future success, and neither being measurably better then the other.

Thanks for the second link it is somewhat close to what I was looking for, I think I just need to write a script to compile the data I need.