Wraith

If your TNT feed on Spectrum is frozen like mine, try the TNT streaming app. That is working for me on my Roku.

The guy is less than a year out from major knee reconstruction.

This is a good time to point out that when "everyone is looking at it the same way" there is an enormous opportunity for the smart and clever people to gain an advantage. That is the real premise of "Moneyball." "Moneyball" was not about adherence to one particular school of analytical thought. It was about identifying the market inefficiencies and exploiting them. When everyone (the "market") is on the same page about what is valuable and not valuable, it becomes very cost effective to find the hidden value in the "not valuable." Sooner or later, everyone else will recognize that hidden value and the "not valuables" become "valuable." In the process, formerly "valuables" will be "not valuables" and the process will repeat. The system is read and react, and therefore will never reach an equilibrium and will be entertainingly dynamic for those not afraid of change.

Mitchell is an UFA. Flynn is about to be an RFA. Very big difference when it comes to return.

Curious that you think the better data from the NHL will remove the need for the stats nerds. The fact that the NHL is even doing this is due to the success of the stats nerds within the NHL and the other professional sports and the result will be even more work for them with a wealth of new information.

Have any of you folks making the comparison to Jonathan Drouin ever actually looked at Drouin's record? Even after the "extra" year in Juniors, Drouin has played three seasons with a total of 128 games in Juniors. In comparison, Sam Reinhart has already played in 3 full seasons and part of a fourth, for a total of 203 games. Reinhart already has 60% (75 games, a full season's worth!) more games in Juniors than Drouin and if he goes back again this year he will have more than doubled Drouin's experience. It is a horrible comparison!

I think the notion that a coach doesn't have to understand analytics at all is a fallacy. Yes, a big part of the current work in most sports is player evaluation and thus handled by the General Manager, not the coach. But an underrated aspect of sports analysis is evaluating tactics. Since the sports data revolution started with baseball, there is a great example about how analytics have not infiltrated the managers the way they have the front office. This has a profound effect on day-to-day tactics. Managers will, almost every day, refuse to use their best relief pitchers in the highest leverage (most important) game situations because it's not a "save situation." Team's regularly blow leads in the sixth, seventh, or eighth inning with an inferior relief pitcher on the mound while their closer, inarguably the best reliever on the team, watches because it's not a save situation yet. It's infuriating. It's especially infuriating because baseball, with it's rich history and incredibly large sample size, has a system that can tell you, in real time, when the high leverage situations are! Having your best relief pitcher enter the game at the start of the ninth inning with nobody on base is almost never the best use of his skills. But the current generation of managers have grown up being told that is how you use a bullpen and so it remains. Now to hockey. One tactical situation that is starting to get noticed by the stat heads in the dump-in versus the carry-in entry into the offensive zone. Willfully turning the puck over to the opponent at a very high rate using the dump and chase method is incredibly inefficient compared to the carry-in.This article sums it up nicely: http://www.si.com/nh...-chase-strategy Can any of you image a traditionalist like Nolan, who is all about the effort, would ever advocate for a lower rate of dump and chases?

15 years ago? Thurman Munson doesn't ring a bell to you, does it?

Drouin is not a good comparison. Even with his "extra" season, he only has 128 games in junior. Reinhart already has 203.

Very interesting. First thing that jumped out at me was Regehr. If my memory is correct, he would've been in the upper left corner by himself last season. It (at least partially) explained his horrible Corsi numbers last year. This year he's being used just like most of the team and his Corsi is still crappy.

I'm in the same region (Time Warner Finger Lakes) and the only fool proof method is to record the SD Feed (channel 51). Although tonight the guide was actually correct for a change (game was on MSG2, 1093).

Agreed. Stafford has been given a ton of defensive responsibility this season so far and has been excellent. His puck possession in the offensive zone was also very good tonight. The points will start coming.

The latest poll from IBD/TIPP, from over the weekend, 2012 shows Obama +6 in the general election. The article is relevant because it says that IBD/TIPP was the most accurant final polling (amongst daily tracking polls and otherwise) in 2004 and 2008. It's the counter point to the Gallup poll. Someday this disparity will make for an interesting case study about likely voter screening.

Yes and no. Your guess is accurate in that Rosen's main critique of the TPC analysis is that it assume a net zero change in income or spending. A huge section of the analysis is focused on that. He includes 3%, 5%, and 7% growth in his calculations. Rosen's argument on that front is that because the plan is clearly aimed at growth, assuming exactly zero growth is wrong. The argument is a bit of a red herring, though, because regardless of the assumed growth rate, the primary source of additional tax revenue comes from three tax base broadening measures. Here, Rosen's numbers differ substantially from the TPC analysis and I see no explanation as to why. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

You said unemployment figures were misleading. I'm saying they are no more misleading now than they've ever been. I'm also saying that we're also better off now than this time four years ago (the original question). At this time in 2008, unemployment was at 8%, under employment was at 14%, and both were skyrocketing. Now, unemployment is at 8% and improving slowly. Underemployment is at 14% and improving slowly. From an employment standpoint, that is much better. It's not recovered. Who here is arguing that it is recovered?

Partially agree, mostly disagree. The official unemployment data by definition doesn't account for underemployment (which is what you picked up on when I referred to "quality" of employment in my previous post). That makes for a very good talking point for conservative politicians at the moment. But that talking point is intentionally dishonest because for all the scrutiny placed on the current unemployment numbers, the historical data is not vetted at all. The implication is that current unemployment data is misleading but the historical unemployment data is rock solid. That is very wrong. That is why, for all the rhetoric, it is not clear at all whether the quality of employment will be significantly worse over the long term. On the spectrum of employment quality, the official unemployment figure is classified as U3. The broadest "underemployed" category (and therefore the largest number) is U6. U6 is the figure conservative politicians have been quoting. U6 includes part time workers and people who have stopped looking for work. I could only find graphs of U6 going back to 1994. It's possible it wasn't tracked before then, I don't know. Below are graphs of U3 and U6 from 1994 to mid-2012. Both graphs shows the exact same trend over the entire time range. Both were rocketing upwards at this time in 2008, both peaked and reversed course in 2009 and both have been trending consistently but modestly downwards since. Both are now at almost identical levels to 2009 when Obama took office. There has been a fairly consistent offset between U3 and U6 between 4% - 6% for the entire time range. In 1994, the offset was about 5%, immediately before the crash it was around 4% and right now it's around 6%. The exisiting data shows the disconnect has always been there. Yes, right now that disconnect is slightly bigger than it was during the recent good and moderately good years. I'd love to know what the disconnect was like during the Great Depression and some of the larger recessions since then. The only recession we have for comparison in this data set is 2001-2002 which was paltry compared to this. U6 employment was a lagging indicator following the recovery of the 2001-2002 recession. It is still entirely possible it will be in the so-called "Great Recession" as well. U3 Unemployment (The official unemployment figure) U6 Unemployment (The broadest underemployment figure)

I don't post much, but I lurk frequently. Therefore, I know you are an intelligent guy. In another post, you just hit the nail on head regarding use of numbers in context. Thus, it stuns me you would try make the bolded arguments, because they ignore context so completely. This first graph shows unemployment over time. Yes, if you take a snapshot of unemployment in January 2009 and compare it to now, the present number will be slightly worse. But look at the slope of the line. If I remember correctly, you're a math guy like myself. Take the derivative at those two points in time and tell me what you see. This plot alone answers the original question. Employment was in a freefall then. It bottomed out early in Obama's presidency and has been growing modestly but consistently since. This second graph shows gaseline prices. It shows that when the economy started to tank in the beginning of 2008, gasoline prices dropped dramatically as demand was cut dramatically. The drop in gasoline prices coincides perfectly with the dramatic increase in unemployment, and both are reflective of the economic crash. Now that the economy is returning to pre-2008 levels, gasoline prices have risen to almost the level they were before the crash. This is reflective of many factors, one of the main one is that as the economy has recovered significantly, thereby restoring demand. The recovery is not complete. Gasoline prices returned to there pre-crash levels, but unemployment hasn't yet. There is also a raging debate about whether, even if unemployment gets back to the pre-crash level, if the employment will be of the same quality as it was before. There is a lot of rhetoric and very little science on that subject.

There's no way Romney could've nailed Obama on that argument at this point. I think Romney's actions both at the time (when he denounced the tweet from the U.S. Embassy in Egypt that he mistakenly connected to the Libya attack) and since (his continued focus on when Obama said the word "terror" in connection to this attack) show that Romney feels an immediate judgement by the president was necessary. That is clear to me. Looks like we both agree immediate response from the President was necessary, but not a judgement as to what actually happened. I think the adminstration tried to hedge and play both sides, which I disagreed at the time. In the immediate aftermath, the administration should've played neither side. They made the chaotic nature of the event more chaotic, at least from an information standpoint. The section of the Rose Garden speech you highlighted shows the president treading carefully and hedging within the same speech. But to say they focused only on the option that looked better for the administration is also not correct. Obama referred to the attack as terrorism on both 9/12 and 9/13, and I read articles that featured elements of the intelligence and defense communities speculating that the attack was more than a spontaneous act of violence as early as 9/13. I'll try to find one of those articles.

Are you trying argue for or against my argument? I just said that correct response would've been to link it to neither terrorism nor the video until after an investigation. That doesn't change my argument that Romney's focus on the use of the specific word "terror" was both incorrect and frivilous and caused him to whiff on what could've been a successful point about the muddled response.

It should be clear to you what Obama said. I just posted it. Your claim that the moderator was incorrect is wrong. Once again, the focus on semantics on this subject is appalling to me. Even if Obama never used the word "terror", so what? The correct response was to show anger over the attack, promise a full investigation and an appropriate response. The administration was correct in denouncing the anti-Islam movie to help assuage the dissent across the Arab world on the subject. But they overplayed their hand by immediately connecting the movie to the Libya attack. Collectively, they looked foolish because of the mixed message. But the words of Obama himself were pretty uniquivocal and by focusing on them, Romney lost out on a legitimate critique.

I assume you've read the transcript of that Rose Garden speech on 9/12/12. You're choosing to interpret President Obama's reference to "acts of terror" to only encompass the 9/11/01 attack. That is very partisan view. Starting at the references to 9/11/01, here is the rest of the transcript. His "acts of terror" remark (note the use of the plural) is sandwhich directly between references to both 9/11/01 and 9/11/12. Obama is obviously treading very carefully but he clearly could be referring to both 9/11/01 and 9/11/12. Romney opened himself up for this type of response because he put the focus on the specific usage of the word "terror," which is totally frivalous, instead of focusing on the muddled response from the rest of the administrattion, where he might've been able to make a successful point.

Interesting that you bring up and mock Stafford and the Corsi number, yet my conclusion based on that data was 100% correct. The premise was that as of December 27, Stafford's Corsi number did not match his actual production. The supporting data showed that Stafford was leading the team in shots per game by a huge margin but his production was being suppressed by a "painfully low shooting percentage" that was due to bounce back in the second half of the season. Is or is that not what actually happened? We get it. You are unwilling or unable to undestand concepts that don't fit your preconceptions. You aversion to actual data analysis and numbers is fascinating considering your well documented belief in numerology.

Not correct. Connolly wasn't on the ice for either Kings goal. The rules comment was referring to the fact that Connolly's goal was on the power play and therefore did not count towards his +/-. The assist was on the power play as well so also doesn't count. The +1 came from the Hecht goal, in which his clean face-off win contributed despite the lack of an assist credit. Connolly had a really nice game tonight and was the first star. It's time to give him some credit. He has been much better the last few weeks.

Not familiar with the rules of hockey, eh?

I'm not going to dispute that Pominville has been very bad this year. I'm sure the injury is at least part of the problem, but regardless it is an objective fact that he has been bad. It's stunning to me that Connolly is continuingly ripped as the worst Sabre to ever touch the ice this year when his two line mates have been so bad. That being said, you have a very selective memory if you can't recall Pominville excellent wrist shot. His only goal of the season came off a laser wrister against New Jersey. He's got a fanstastic release. He just doesn't use it as often as he should.