squishyx

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.sonicsarena.com/news/the-latest-on-bringing-the-nba-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).

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.

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.

Perhaps you know of one but I haven't found a website that provides snapshots of past seasons at a given date. Something like "2011 standings at date XX/XX/XXXX, or 50% of the way through the season. That would probably lead more accurate assessments. Short of that, we do have season totals, and can then look at playoff performances to see if there is any connection there. I'm going to look at the top 5 finishers in corsi and goal differential (GDiff) for a given year, then compare it to the SC finalists. I'll also list where the finalists finished in [corsi, +/-] as a reference. *I used http://stats.hockeyanalysis.com/teamstats.php for corsi %, and nhl.com for goal diff. -- 2013 -- Actual: TBD Corsi top 5: LA, NJD, Bos, Chi, Ott GDiff top 5: Chi, Pit, Ana, Mon, Bos -- 2012 -- Actual: LA[2,11] vs NJD [13, 9] Corsi top 5: Det, LA, Pit, Bos, Stl GDiff top 5: Bos, Pit, Van, Det, Stl Result: Corsi, Corsi had one of the finalists, but missed on the Dev's, GDiff had as bad a year -- 2011 -- Actual: Bos[14, 2] vs Van [5, 1] Corsi top 5: SJ, Det Pit, Chi, Van GDiff top 5: Van, Bos, Pit, Phi, SJ Result: GDiff, Good year for GDiff, nailed it (albeit wrong winner), Corsi just grabs Vancouver, but pretty wide right miss on Bos -- 2010 -- Actual: Chi[1,2] vs Phi[13, 12] Corsi top 5: Chi, Det, Was, Tor, Bos GDiff top 5: Was, Chi, Van, SJ, NJ Result: Tie -- 2009 -- Actual: Pit[19,9] vs Det[1, 3] Corsi top 5: Det, Cal, Chi, Was, SJ GDiff top 5: Bos, SJ, Det, Chi, NJ Result: Tie, but I wouldn't argue too hard against anyone who said they would give a slight edge to Corsi -- 2008 -- Actual: Det [1,1] vs Pit [29,4] Corsi top 5: Det, Was, NYR, SJ, Cal GDiff top 5: Det, Mon, Dal, Pit, SJ Result: GDiff, Corsi did nab the wings as #1, but their eventual challenger was pegged at #29th (stats.hockeyanalysis.com doesn't have data prior to this, thats why I stopped here) What I learned from this: They both kind of suck at accurate playoff predictions. And while I certainly wouldn't declare GDiff a winner with a meager 2-1-2 record, I would hope we could agree that Corsi has no clear cut predictive power over it. Again, I recognize that I am comparing season stats to playoffs, a better value would be to look at snap shots at quarterly marks or something, but I didn't have that on hand. This goes backto an intrinsic argument I've always held, stats do not predict future results with enough consistency to be used reliably. Stats, including microstats, are good for qualitative comparisons of past data sets, or setting reasonable expectations. And now I apologize for letting this become another microstats debate.

I don't want to turn this into another microstats debate, because there is some correlation between a teams corsi and how they finish.But it's substantially stronger if you looked at just team +/- Rank Team GP GF GA +/----------------------------------------------------1 P - CHICAGO 48 155 102 532 Z - PITTSBURGH 48 165 119 463 Y - MONTRÉAL 48 149 126 234 Y - ANAHEIM 48 140 118 225 X - BOSTON 48 131 109 226 Y - WASHINGTON 48 149 130 197 X - NY RANGERS 48 130 112 188 X - LA 48 133 118 159 X - ST. LOUIS 48 129 115 1410 X - TORONTO 48 145 133 1211 X - OTTAWA 48 116 104 1212 X - DETROIT 48 124 115 913 X - SAN JOSE 48 124 116 814 Y - VANCOUVER 48 127 121 615 COLUMBUS 48 120 119 116 X - ISLANDERS 48 139 139 E17 TAMPA BAY 48 148 150 -218 X - MINNESOTA 48 122 127 -519 PHOENIX 48 125 131 -620 PHILADELPHIA 48 133 141 -821 EDMONTON 48 125 134 -922 DALLAS 48 130 142 -1223 WINNIPEG 48 128 144 -1624 NEW JERSEY 48 112 129 -1725 BUFFALO 48 125 143 -1826 NASHVILLE 48 111 139 -2827 CALGARY 48 128 160 -3228 CAROLINA 48 128 160 -3229 COLORADO 48 116 152 -3630 FLORIDA 48 112 171 -59

The city was promised the next available team, be it a move or expansion would go to Seattle. So while this certainly is bad news for them, I think it's just a matter of time. I also don't think that there needs to be a basketball team first, just that one has to be in the works. I could see a push for a hockey team in 2014-15 with a bball team eyed on the horizon.

First tie breaker is regulation or overtime wins (basically excludes shootout wins) and unfortunately we have 17 and the Sabres 14.

Winnipeg and Dallas to knock out the Rangers and Wild. Also a bonus for me if the Wings miss the playoffs so we can restart our consecutive playoff appearances rivalry =D After the playoffs start, Columbus if they hold on.

"So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will." - Patton Oswalt It's sad the WB "church" continues their hatred. But they are but a fringe group and it just shows the world what kind of monsters they are. They won't be anywhere near the funerals, best to just ignore their pathetic grabs for attention.

Not a fan of 6 outdoor games in 1 year, I think it's going to drain a lot of enthusiasm for the games even if it's the Devils. If they had to expand on outdoor games it would have been nicer if they did 1 per division per year and rotate through the 7-8 teams.

Hrm.. any American Express card holders?

Ottawa has lost 4 in a row, and we play them Friday so they are potentially a team we can leapfrog. This team wasn't all that great last year either, we finished 6th (albeit a very comfortable 6th). We lost Broduer for a long stretch, we're missing Kovy now, we lost Parise in the off season and as it turns out Zajac is not having an impact year. There's really nothing to suggest that we should be doing better then last year and I still think we can finish 6 or 7th.

That might be the path of least resistance, but in theory we could win out and the islanders could still be on top of us, the only playoff team we can pass by our own merits is the rangers. Obviously at this point "controlling destiny" is just academic, as we don't need to go 9-0 to make it, but with all the gloom I thought a little perspective might help.

Despite the terrible outcomes, the team has played really well these last few games, and we actually still have control over our playoff destiny, with a game in hand on the jets, and a pair of games against the rangers we can still sneak into the 8th spot needing no help from anyone else, of course that starts with winning the tough games before that.

The Canadian teams have the heritage classic though to hold them over. I think we will eventually get one (as will all teams) it just might take a while. Not sure if they would do Devils - Rangers though, essentially the same market.

3 points, but they have a game in hand, so really its a 1 point cushion. But it's still something, it means the Rangers, and Islanders for that matter, still need "help" to pass us.

Bernier, Volchenkov, Harold? all 3 were on the ice for 3GA tonight. Granted Gio didn't look very well on that last play, the Devils stopped playing in the 3rd.

On the other hand.. Elias is 4th from the top.

Scott? He played forward for a bit?

I don't tether much weight to divisional banners anyway but at least in '88 the Devils were part of the Patrick division. Under this new setup you could win it for a division you don't play in, unless they either don't hand the banners out, or stick with the regular season totals either of those would be fine with me.

I agree wild cards are dumb, but I wouldn't have a problem with re-seeding divisional winners. Just don't think of it as a conference championship, if they ever remove wildcards then the term conference doesn't need to be applied at all. They only need it now to distinguish which divisional winners play which wildcards.

2011 - Montreal previously received the pick as compensation for not signing 2006 first-round pick David Fischer before August 15, 2010.[34] 2009 - 7.* On March 11, 2009, the NHL general managers agreed to award the 17th selection of the second round as a compensatory pick to the New York Rangers for deceased player Alexei Cherepanov.[18] 2008 - 3. * The Phoenix Coyotes' compensatory second-round pick, awarded for Blake Wheeler rejecting a Coyotes contract offer and becoming a free agent,[4] went to the Anaheim Ducks due to a trade on June 20, 2008, that sent the 27th-overall pick to Phoenix in exchange for the 39th-overall pick and this pick. 2007 - ^ See pick 16. Previously awarded to Minnesota as compensation for losing rights to 2004 first-round pick (12th overall) A.J. Thelen, June 2, 2007. 2006 - not sure, prob something along the previous lines 2005 - There were a ton of compensatory picks handed out mostly in the later rounds, I'm not sure exactly why but that was also the lockout draft.

Teams can be awarded picks for various reasons. I believe the Rangers were awarded a 2nd or 3rd pick when their prospectdied in Russia. I also think there is some rule where if you can't sign your 1st round pick to a deal you get awarded a 2nd round. The details might be off but that's the jist.

Ah, that actually sounds kinda cool. This playoff structure is going to seem so weird to non-hockey fans, "It's divisional playoffs where sometimes a team from Div B plays against Div A but not Div C and D, but only for 2 rounds".