Missing: Jaromir Jagr

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NHL Realignment

NHL realignment talk is in the air. With the Thrashers move to Winnipeg it gives the league the opportunity to make a few changes that have been sitting in their "To-do" box for quite some time.

According to Craig Custance the new alignment would cut the divisions down from three per conference to two. And apparently Detroit, Columbus, and Nashville would be interested in moving to the East.

With all of this in mind, and coming to the conclusion that Nashville is stuck in the West for now, we imagine what the league could look like in year or so. That is if there is still a team in Phoenix.

Eastern Conference

• Division I

• Boston Bruins
• Buffalo Sabres
• Montreal Canadiens
• New Jersey Devils
• New York Islanders
• New York Rangers
• Ottawa Senators
• Toronto Maple Leafs

• Division II

• Carolina Hurricanes
• Columbus Blue Jackets
• Detroit Red Wings
• Florida Panthers
• Pittsburgh Penguins
• Philadelphia Flyers
• Tampa Bay Lightning
• Washington Capitals

Western Conference

• Division III

• Chicago Blackhawks
• Colorado Avalanche
• Dallas Stars
• Minnesota Wild
• Nashville Predators
• St. Louis Blues
• Winnipeg Jets

• Division IV

• Anaheim Ducks
• Calgary Flames
• Edmonton Oilers
• Los Angeles Kings
• Phoenix Coyotes
• San Jose Sharks
• Vancouver Cancuks

Update: The National Post also gave the new alignment a go, coming up with a different Eastern Conference divisional breakdown

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Your First Round Results

Everything is going to be okay. I have a large bowl of ice cream in front of me. I'll have something on the end of the Penguins season sometime tomorrow. But for now, here are the your first round, and what a hell of a round it was, results.

Keeping 'Em Honest

I have something of an obsession with keeping score of everything. Counting the amount stoplights I hit on my way to work, or the amount of tiles there are on the floor. I quantify anything I come across.I justified the purchase of my expensive running shoes by figuring I had only paid about 13 cents a mile.

Clearly I am not all right in the head.

That, teamed with my love of hockey, is what brings us to another post-season trying to keep the experts honest.

Every year anyone with a soapbox to stand on makes their play-off predictions. And I do, as well. It's fun and it gives us a rooting interest in some series that we might be torn on. However, because of my pathological need to know the score, I like to put together a chart like the one below. That way when my picks perform better than anyone who makes a living doing this, I can celebrate and tell myself how awesome I am. 

click image to see full-size

As is usually the case, I'll probably add to this list as I stumble upon other predictions. It is currently short many voices from TSN, but only because they must have the common sense to not publish their predictions on the internet to be remembered forever. I wish I had the same discretion when, in an early season panic, I tweeted that the horrible Penguins defense would allow 260 goals this season.

Predicting the Playoffs is Simple

With the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs kicking off tomorrow, many people are sitting down with a pencil and a bracket today, myself included. And as I make my best Nostradamus impression, I keep telling myself those pieces of advice we tend to repeat in these times. That defense wins championships. That the Sharks will choke. That it’s about the match-up not the seed. That the seed is meaningless.

Well, that isn’t entire true. The Sharks part is, but the seeds aren’t exactly meaningless. They just aren’t all that great either. Over the last 4 post seasons the higher seed has only won 36 of the 60 matchups, or 60%. Hardly impressive.

But what if there was a statistic just sitting out there that was more accurate in predicting series winners? Even more accurate than a particular crab-eating macaque monkey?

It turns out – there is. Considerably more accurate.

Like how about going 50-10 over the same last 4 postseasons?

83.3%.

That’s only missing 16.7% of the time. You cannot even get dentists to agree on a toothpaste with that kind of consistency.

How about correctly predicting 15 of the last 24 upsets?

How about going a near perfect 14-1 in 2008?

Maybe you know about Simple Ranking System, even if you aren’t quite sure how it works. I doubt you were aware of how spot-on it has been predicting postseason series winners.

SIMPLE RANKING SYSTEM

Who exactly concocted SRS is unknown, but Doug from Pro-Football-Reference introduced it to a wider audience almost five years ago in a blog post.

Despite its name, even in a 16 game NFL season it isn’t that simple to figure out. An 82 game NHL season is even more complex. Luckily since its growth in popularity in the stat-heads world it has spread to other sports and a sister site at the Sports Reference Network, Hockey-Reference.

Doug does a better job explaining it, but it works like this:

If the Penguins are playing the Lightning, who normally allow 2.85 goals per game, and the Penguins score 3 times, they are +.15 (3-2.85).

If the Penguins allow 2 goals in the same game, when the Lightning are averaging 2.94 goals per game, the Penguins are another +.94 (2.94-2).

So on the game they are +1.09.

Over the course of the season you do this for every game and average them for a team’s overall SRS rating.

Essentially it judges how a team does factoring in how they are expected to do. Something like grading each game performance on a curve based on the competition.

What caught my eye, as I looked for a leg up in the yearly email playoff pick ‘em I do with my buddies, was the Flyers SRS last regular season. For a 7^th seed, it was high. Second highest in the East.

It got me thinking just how well SRS did at predicted playoff series. And as it turns out, pretty damn well.

All SRS ratings come from the wonderful people at Hockey-Reference. They are awesome.

2010

SRS went 12-3 during the post-season, outperforming seeding which was an unimpressive 8-7. It predicted 4 of the 7 upsets, including Philadelphia’s first round upset of the 2^nd seed Devils and their 2^nd round victory over the Bruins.

The highest SRS rating in the NHL belonged to your eventual Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhawks.

2009

The SRS ratings once again out-did seeding, 11-4 to 9-6.

SRS correctly predicted each time a higher seed beat a lower seed, while also predicting 2 of the 6 upsets, including the Pittsburgh Penguins 7-game series winner over the Capitals.

The Penguins, who had the second highest SRS in the East, won the conference.

The Detroit Red Wings lead the West in SRS and won the conference.

2008

This was the year SRS ratings really nailed the bracket, going 14-1, predicting 5 of the 6 upsets. It also correctly predicted both Conference Champions, and the Stanley Cup Champion.

The higher seed was only 9-6.

2007

Once again it did a wonderful job predicting upsets, hitting 4 out of 5, and going 13-2, compared to seeding which was 10-5.

And once again it did magnificent job suggesting who would be competing for the cup in June.

The Ottawa Senators, who lead the East in SRS, won the conference. The Ducks, who were number 2 in the West, took the conference and the Cup.

2006

This by far was the worst showing for SRS. Which actually isn't all that surprising. I’ve written before about the once-in-a-generation bizarre 2005-06 season.

Left was right, up was down, all 4 top seeds in the West lost in the opening round and Jonathan Cheechoo, now a member of the Worcester Sharks of the AHL, won the Rocket Richard Trophy with 56 goals.

SRS correctly predicted only 2 of the 7 upsets, and merely match seedings, both going 8-7.

WHAT ABOUT 2011?

So what does this mean for this postseason? What does SRS project?

Well, nothing too drastic, save for the Rangers knocking off the top seed in the East, the Capitals, in the opening round.

Do I agree? Probably not (although it should be noted that obviously SRS has done a ridiculously better job than I have over the past couple years).

I understand it though. Despite the divide in points and seeds, the Capitals have only won a few more games than the Rangers. Their Goals For and Goals Allowed are actually quite similar. The biggest difference is that the Caps have lost in OT, picking up the extra points.

What SRS can’t see is the fact that Ryan Callahan won’t be suiting up for the New York.

Other than that, like many experts, SRS predicts the Vancouver Canucks to be your 2011 Stanley Cup Champs, with the Boston Bruins playing runner-up.

EAST

1^st Round

Rangers (8) over Capitals (1)

Flyers (2) over Sabres (7)

Bruins (3) over Canadiens (6)

Penguins (4) over Lighting (5)

2^nd Round

Flyers (2) over Rangers (8)

Bruins (3) over Penguins (4)

Conference Championship

Bruins (3) over Flyers (2)

WEST

1^st Round

Canucks (1) over Blackhawks (8)

Sharks (2) over Kings (7)

Red Wings (3) over Coyotes (6)

Predators (5) over Ducks (4)

2^nd Round

Canucks (1) over Predators (5)

Sharks (2) over Red Wings (3)

Conference Championship

Canucks (1) over Sharks (2)

STANLEY CUP FINAL

Canucks (W1) over Bruins (E3)

WHAT ABOUT THOSE SHARKS?

Have the Sharks choked these past few years? According to SRS, except their 2009 first round loss to the Ducks, not really. It predicted the Hawks beating them in the conference champions last season, their loss to the Stars in 2008, and their loss to the Red Wings* in 2007.

* Originally read "loss to the Predators". Thanks to M4ck for the correction.

Official NHL Concussion Test

After Maple Leaf Mikhail Grabovski returned to the ice the other night after "getting his bell wrung" a couple times by Zdeno Chara, more than a few people questioned whether Grabovski was playing with a concussion. Brian Burke put at ease everyone by explaining that he had been checked out and definitely did not have a concussion.

This comes only a handful of weeks after Sidney Crosby definitely did not get a concussion after being blind-sided in the Winter Classic. He suited up for the Penguins next game against Tampa, where, as we all know to be true because it is the official story, he was concussed by much tamer run-of-the-mill contact along to the boards.

As we are discovering more and more about the health threats associated with concussions I am thankful the our professional sports leagues and their training staffs are not taking the matter lightly.

Now for the first time we have a copy of the very concussion test given to any player suspected of having a concussion before they are ok'd to return to the ice:

The Importance of 2nd and 3rd Goals

Sometimes you don't know what you've got sitting in front of you. Story goes that a relative of mine ordered something from an infomercial which arrived with a set of circular decorative pieces. Not knowing what they were, they were cycled through a variety of uses and purposes. It was only some time later during the holiday season that a guest wondered aloud why there were napkin rings on the Christmas tree.

On Thursday I put together a crude statistical assessment of the value of a goal [What's a goal worth?]. In doing so I found the winning percentage of a team based on their goal total. All just as a step along the way to putting a value on a single average goal.

Looking back over the numbers it occurred to me that I hadn't given enough attention to those intermediary statistics.

A graph of winning percentage based on goals scored looks like this:

Not surprisingly, the more goals scored, the more points a team is likely to earn. Obviously. But by looking at the points growth from goal-to-goal we can also take into account the value of each goal.

As you can see the first goals means little to additional points earned. Most teams aren't winning games 1-0. But it's those second and third goals that bring the greatest increased values. 

As with the previous assessment of an average goals value, it is crude, but it allows us to put an approximate number on something that we all know to be true.

What's a Goal Worth?

Most of these statistical endeavours start off with a simple question.

When I asked myself "Who has the most dangerous shot in the NHL?" I came up with the Shots Taken per Goal and Shots On-Net % statistics (taking into factor missed shots, which the NHL's Shooting % does not).

Today I wondered simply, "What is a goal worth?"

The answer I came up with, about .386 points in the standings.

Methodology:

While with shots we determine their value based on scoring goals, when it comes to scoring goals we obviously have to determine their value based on winning games.

This is further complicated, as so many NHL stats are, with the fact winning percentage is pointless when teams accumulate points in overtime or shootout losses. So instead of using W% we'll use Pts/GP.

Using an individual game the idea goes like this: If a team scores 4 goals in a win, they pick up 2 points, so each goal was worth .5 points. A 3 goal effort that results in an overtime loss would mean each goal was worth .333 points.

If a team loses in regulation, no matter how many goals they score, each is worth 0 points.

Taking the 645 games that have been played so far this season (through January 12th), I took each individual team game performance and grouped them based on goals scored. And then I looked at the record of each goal group to determine the value of the goals based on points in the standings.

Based on the results I created a weighted average to come to the result.

And there you have it, a goal is worth .386 points.

Evaluation:

Just for funsies, lets throw that value into the current standings to see, based on teams Goals For, how the expected point production matches up with their actual point total.

It's obviously flawed to use only one statistic to predict a points total when some teams value goals more than others.

Take for instance the Montreal Canadiens, who have the lowest Total Goals per Game in the league at  4.86. Because they play in tighter scoring games their goals have more value than the .386 number, so the expected points undervalues them.

On the other side, the Colorado Avalanche, who have the highest TG/G with 6.5, are overvalued.

Yet, overall the number works pretty well, if only to put an approximated value on a goal to say something like - By adding Nathan Horton to their line-up the Boston Bruins have added (12 goals x .386) 4.6 points in the standings so far this season.

And when combined with finding the value of other stats, like a hit, face-off win, blocked shot, or a goal allowed, could create a better statistical method for evaluating individual players.

Also, since you sat through all that convoluted wringing of numbers, here is a video of a mob of people doing the Hammer dance in a clothing store.

Can't touch this.

If you think I screwed this up, or if you think there is a better method to go about determining a goal's value, than make sure to tell me in either the comments or through e-mail: JustinRMegahan@gmail.com