TheAud

I believe that BMI index is not based on professional athletes.

Without knowing exactly what future time frame was being predicted...I had a different interpretation of the charts. I had only two takeaways: 1) Expected Goals works best as a predictor when using the past 30 games or so (highest point of R-sq on it's curve), CF% works best with the past 20 games, and GF% works best with about 40 games of data. In other words, using less data than those number of games for each variable doesn't let us utilize their full predictive power. This intuitively makes sense as we can't expect a 5 or even 10 game run to necessarily represent what will happen some number of games in the future as there is too much luck over a short time frame. Likewise, as additional games are added to the data set being used to make predictions beyond the optimal number of games, the predictive power of each variable gets worse. Intuitively this makes sense to me because at some point the data being used to make predictions has occurred long enough ago that conditions have changed enough (think injuries, trades, luck, new coach's system kicks in or players lose interest, etc) that that data's inclusion in the model has a negative impact on it's predictive power. 2) At all points from 10 games through 70 games, both CF% and Exp. Goals are better predictors of future performance than GF%. Why are Corsi and Expected Goals being better predictors than GF% (i.e. +/-)? To some extent, who knows, they just are. But...I think it makes sense, at least to me. Goals for and against are of course what teams are focused on to win games and can directly explain W-L record with some set of probabilistic outcomes associated with every team +/-. In other words, a team that scores 200 goals and gives up 200 goals over the course of a season is most likely to have a 0.500 record (I'm ignoring the impact of the loser point) but that likelihood is much less than 50% chance. They can easily have win%'s of .490 or .510 etc. It's a bell curve of outcomes centered around 0.500. If they happened to have scored 200 goals in one game and were shut out in every other game they will have a win % of 0.012. This is way out on the extreme tail of outcomes, but it's not theoretically impossible. Anyway, goals are scored or allowed due to myriad factors: number of shot attempts, quality of shots, skill of the shooter, skill of the goaltender, luck, etc. In other words, goals for and against are dependent variables, not independent variables. Goals do not stand alone as an explanation of events. Pragmatically speaking, everything we talk about as a sports statistics could be described as a dependent variable based on something else (compared to say, temperature at a given pressure, which is entirely descriptive in and of itself). Since we can't consider every variable in existence, any predictive stat will inherently not have an R-squ approaching 1.0 since all the variables we are not explicitly considering have some level of impact that will create noise in our predictions. But...we can get more discrete than Goals by looking at the major drivers of how goals are scored (or allowed) and separate those factors out. Now we have searched one level below goals and found some variables that have less luck involved with them and have some level of fundamental consistency over time. We still have a bucket containing the rest of the variables ("everything else") which lowers our predictive power, but at least now we can discern trends in key variables that have some predictive power. These key variables are a stronger signal of what will happen next. Whereas just looking at goals alone co-mingles the signal (the key variables) with the noise (everything else) and hence has a lower R-squ. This may make no sense to anyone but me but it helped to try to write it out ?

So...first ballot HOF’er?

Very true. Observers league wide were linking “Tavares Watch” with “Wilson Watch” all the time, so your post makes total sense.

Challenging to find a trade offer for ROR that doesn't involve getting back any players from the CHL. :P

Hutton for 3 years @2.75 instead of Bernier, and Wedgewood for Rochester....I'm happy.

We just have very different reads on it, that's all. No way JBots was being nice in my opinion. If the car seller had said "I'll give you a lower price now, but if you sell the car for a higher price in a year then you come back and give me the difference" you might take that right? You either keep the car at a price you agree to, or you sell the car and got to use it for a year or less and netted out at zero. The point is in this case buying the car is tied to a motorcycle purchase you really want.... Holy cow I am done with these analogies!

If he's worth 2+M per year for 2 years then do the Sabres get Sheary and him both for a 3rd or 4th? No way. Come on, man. It's a negotiation. Ever buy a used car? Did you consider pointing out all the flaws of the car to extract a lower price or some concession from the seller? Nothing any different going on here. They probably do want to trade Hunwick but are worried they can't get anything for him. Pens are just saying "hey, if you can't get anything for him them it's only a 4th, not a 3rd". In a certain sense a 3rd and 4th aren't a lot different, but when it's your profession to build an NHL hockey club, build a winner, and prudently spend your owner's millions of dollars at a time, you probably should be fairly focused on optimizing each draft pick acquired or traded away, and only taking on $4.5M in salary over two years for a player if you have a good chance to utilize him and not simply waive him and consume cap space, and those millions go out the door for nothing. I mean, if it's worth it to get Sheary you do what you have to do but no reason not to drive the absolute best deal you can as well. I think this is an area where ex-GMTM was lacking. He made bold moves but didn't necessarily optimize each trade for the best possible deal (just my sense of it, I can't really prove that) to maximize assets.

In other words you're making an argument based on the demonstrated performance data as opposed to narrative and opinion. Opinions may currently be 10:1 that Casey is a better player. And opinions matter. But a space alien coming to Earth and looking at their stats and performance would say "they're not that much different". Except that Casey resembles them a bit.

Try this one on. Buf: "Yeah, I'll take that terrible overpaid Hunwick off your hands if you give me Sheary for a 4th" Pit: "Hey! He's not that bad. We were a Stanley Cup contender and he played half the season" Buf: "No, he sucks and negates the value of Sheary" Pit: "No it doesn't! He's at least a neutral addition..." (this goes on for awhile, it's a negotiation). Pit: "I tell you what, we think Hunwick has value, you don't. If you can trade him for something, that proves our point that he had value. In that case we get a 3rd instead of a 4th. If you are 'saddled' with him, then it's just a 4th'. Buf: "Fair enough, deal". (This is the abbreviated version) So Pittsburgh doesn't actually care what Buffalo does with him per se, they are offering it as a hedge for Buffalo in order to get the deal done. That's my take on it anyway.

If I had analysis indicating the rest of the NHL overvalue the Canadian Jr's (i.e. they have a disproportionately higher failure rate over time given their draft position vs. other leagues) and I valued the extra development years more than most other NHL teams, I could see a draft where I picked no CHL players happening quite often. The Sabres board would systematically rate players from Non-CHL leagues a little higher than most other team's boards. When the draft happens, the other teams are snapping up more CHL players whereas the Sabres board doesn't have them quite so highly ranked (in general), so the scenario where a higher rated CHL player is left for the Sabres to pick, per their board, may rarely happen. Now I am not saying the analysis indicating the CHL is overvalued exists, nor do I know how strongly JBots values the additional development years. I am just saying that if these premises were true and the Sabres were in a minority in the NHL, a CHL-free draft result may happen more often than not. As others have pointed out, it's more likely a CHL player would be picked in round 1 if the Sabres had a high pick and the talent was clearly evident. But as the draft goes on, the difference in valuations will make it increasingly unlikely a CHL player would be selected by Buffalo. I don't think this is a problem per se. It's just a valuation made by the front office. If it's a bad judgment then of course that is likely to hurt over time. BTW it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Canadian juniors were systematically overrated by old time hockey management types.

That Russian kids Mom is smokin’. Or it’s his GF? Can’t tell My God that makes me feel old

“It’s so cool” Indeed Rasmus, it is.

Just giving her a hard time...agree she did fine.

The Stanley what championship?

Do mosquitos actually have good vision? Barry Sanders? I’m confused

Tough speech to give for a guy who could never have imagined being in such a position. Also, Dallas fans are clueless idiots with the booing.

Bernier for 2 years @ $2.5M per would be a good complement to Ullmark. Let them fight it out for playing time. Then take a flier on another veteran who can battle for playing time in Rochester. Like Christopher Gibson or Scott Wedgewood.

Oh right, JT and Bonnie Raitt show...I might have thought of that since I AM GOING TO IT

I can see offering tickets first to STH, then after a period of time opening it up to the general public. Maybe even have a mini-pack holder time period in between. If keeping it in HarborCenter was a hard constraint for some reason (any conflicting concerts in Key Arena for example? I haven't checked) and they really wanted to do it on those dates for some reason, then I get it. But it seems like they could have found a time that would work from a hockey and PR perspective. Would be interesting to know the rationale.

Work sucks, but it's Friday and the wife and I are going to Geneva tonight for dinner at the best rated restaurant I could find on Yelp, and then sitting in the 3rd row to see Robert Cray in concert.

They do have whoever Vegas would have taken instead of McNabb. So there is that.

I thought about the timeframe for UFA vs. RFA and should have looked that up and included it but I was lazy. Thanks for pointing it out. That said, I don't really agree that $4.5M for 4 years is all that horrible for the team. It all depends on which risks they want to live with and which they want to hedge against. -If Reino ends up as a consistent 65+ point stud scorer this contract has the risk that they can't resign him at the end of 4 years. It has the benefit of getting tremendous value vs. the salary cap for 4 years. -If Reino stays at that sort of 45-50 pt guy with a lot of it on the PP, they have him at a fair market value or better for 4 years and can deal with resigning him or not in 4 years. -If Reino regresses (unlikely at his age) or becomes injury prone (no evidence of this) then they regret this contract. This risk is low. So if we're convinced he's going to end up as a premier scorer, then this would be a bad deal after 4 years (and a great one before that). In the other scenarios it's not a bad deal at all. At least that's how I view it. I agree they probably still prefer a bridge deal.

At this point I'd keep ROR's fixed salary (which as Flagg points out becomes relatively more reasonable vs. the salary cap each year) and near elite performance with a game not predicated on speed, assuming a normal decline over time of his skills as he heads toward 30 and past it, vs. Reinhart's untapped potential and pending RFA status. If Reinhart can be signed to a very team friendly deal (like 4.5M for 4 years or something like that) it would start to swing my preference more his way. But I expect he'll get more like 5.5M for 2 years bridge deal which is less appealing. ROR's beard is impressive but Samson has superior flow, so from a hirsute perspective it's a draw.

Took you up on that and listened to his one full album I had access to on Amazon. It's interesting enough I will give it another try for sure, but didn't quite grab me like that Metamodern Sounds in Country Music album by Sturgill did. Thanks for the reco.