Marvin

I was hoping for this as a protest over Peng Shuai or the Uyghurs. You know -- principle.

I remember when the Monty Hall problem first came out. I spent about half a class on it because it is counter-intuitive for most. What is interesting it that the confusion only occurs with three doors. I simulated this with picking the Joker out of a set of cards. No one screws up with 4 cards and you show two cards. Indeed, the students, from the A's to the F's, intuitively knew to switch even if you show only 1 card.

That's a very good heuristic. I like it.

I need to go to nhl.com and then pick up the play by play there. Try Rochester's radio station also.

Low stakes. But if you can count cards, it is relatively easy to tell who counts cards. You can see the odds shift and the player's strategy shifts accordingly. And even if you are only passable at counting cards like I am, you can tell roughly how good the other card counters are. They throw you out because your stack slowly grows while everyone else is losing. They aren't making money off you and you are pissing off other players. That's why 1 person has a limited life at a casino. Teams who can play-act wild betting (when one person joins a table when another teammate at the table indicates the odds are heavily skewed) will be big winners and can get away with it potentially indefinitely.

So we have an option if Dell gets injured and GMKA still won't trade?

I have OCD and a somewhat addictive personality with a depression-heavy bipolar disorder. I also have been thrown out of casinos for counting cards long before the MIT Poker team existed. The rush from a win against the odds is very real. When I won when the odds were against me but I played the percentages, I got a rush of neurotransmitters that is hard to describe; the closest I can come to is the Bills backing into the playoffs with help from the Bengals. If I did not have the internal discipline to play my game against all distractions and to quit if I fell too far behind, I could easily see myself blowing wads of cash at the casino. If I were really depressed, I could imagine every little win while I was losing my shirt would be very attractive. I am very thankful that I have such discipline and that I channel these issues into being a good researcher and studious employee.

Dahlin's problem is less volume and more timing -- some of his have resulted in disaster, so they stick in the the head. This is where the "eye test" is lying to us. I would also bet that his zone exits and heads, shoulders, and torsos above most of the rest of his teammates. This is the problem with not having above-average goaltending to compensate for defencive mistakes while simultaneously not have above-average defencive play to compensate for goaltending mistakes. Because both are below average and the forwards are largely in the bottom half of the league means a lot of losses and lost opportunities for wins.

This is very complex and maybe should be taken to one of the side boards.

Eddie, the Shipboard Computer, not Mr. Scott. I presume you are Zaphod Beeblebrox having had too many Janx Spirits?

Hulu? Man, do I hate big companies mining my data. Maybe Paul Hamilton's speculation in the "After the Whistle" podcast is accurate: Don Granato has over-compensated for the offence-stifling system which Ralph Krueger ran. It is possible to run the system with a more defencively-aware mindset with some adjustments. Maybe he needs to do that.

Clarification: I need at least two "crease clearing" defencemen for penalty kills. It's the nature of the game. But being physically strong does not imply that they run people through the boards. Bill Hajt (another player who was inexplicable disliked by much of the fan base) was one of the best players at this -- he didn't hit much, but he was positionally amazing and he could muscle people out from in front of the net.

Again, I am going to refer to Nik Lidstrom at 25 and Paul Coffey at 34 against New Jersey on a veteran Detroit team. Calling them bad in their own zone is being generous. Against good teams with good puck pressure and disciplined positioning, they were often a disaster waiting to happen in their own zone. Remember Scott Niedermeyer splitting them for the Devils' game winning goal in game 2? My friends who are Devils fans sure do. That was far from the only mistake they made in that series. Honestly, Dahlin at 21 is defencively about where Coffey was at 34 and is better now than Lidstrom was at 25. But there should be consequences. One way to teach better defencive awareness is to take him off the power play and emphasise penalty killing. Punch Imlach and Joe Crozier made Perreault learn defencive responsibility by feeding him penalty killing time once Luce and Ramsay came off the ice when the result was already at hand. I think he should be on the penalty kill with the most responsible defencive forwards -- probably Girgensons and Okposo. I would also have GMKA emphasise getting quality veteran defencemen to be partners for Dahlin, Jokiharu, Bryson, and Samuelsson and stick to 4 pairs -- each Brian Campbell, Dmitri Kalinin, and Henrik Tallinder needs a Teppo Numminen, Jay McKee, and Toni Lydman respectively to help their growth.

If there is one thing I wish I could cure the fan base of, it would be its obsession with defencemen being tough above all else, no matter how bad the player is at other phases of the game.

This is where I land: better goaltending would beget better development. Players were just doing their jobs early in the year. Since Anderson went down, there has been a lot of "try too hard". I think the lack of trust in the goaltenders has made them overthink and become less defencively aware. And that's too bad -- IMHO, in Florida, had the team stuck to its discipline, they probably win that game. This is why I want to pilfer Holtby from Dallas and take another contract off their hands. Maybe get a 3rd team involved to off-load that contract to someone who could use that player. Send Dallas a late pick back.

This might be worse: from 1969-85, when my Godfather was a scout and then coach for the Miami Dolphins, I had the problem of my two favourite teams being arch-rivals.

First, welcome back to the board. Second, anyone named "Casper" or "Stay Puft Marshmellow Man" on the ghost board?

When it rains, it pours.

I just wanted to emphasise this. Being the one everyone craps on takes its toll. I was bullied incessantly as a child and it still affects me 50 years later. I need to ask if the team's loss of positional discipline is more than merely correlated with Anderson going down.

Defence isn't a cheer for the Sabres; it's a question.

Given that the team's current lack of defencive awareness and his lack of practise time, I am unsurprised by Subban's outing. I was hoping for a greater commitment to defencive positioning from the skaters to help him out. I am also wondering if the recent insertions into the line-up mean that many need to adjust to their new linemates, which will make the defencemen's and goaltenders' task that much harder.

Good luck, Malcolm. You are going to need it behind this group.

I agree with this. The Florida game showed how talent can overwhelm who are mostly JAGs in their defencive zone. And yes, besides Dahlin and Jokiharu, I am counting Thompson, Mittlestadt, and Olofsson as JAGs in their own zone. They can't get caught running around, chasing the puck, colliding with each other, and leaving guys wide open in their own zone. Do I wish we had Ullmark? Of course -- our record would be considerably better with him on the team. But on Thursday, Dell actually played well enough to win; the team in front of him looked like it had learnt positional defence online.

THAT is the best description. Welcome to the board.

Agreed. Moreover, they would be competing with the Rockets in Houston like they are competing with the Suns in Phoenix. But then would they move east and unbalance the conferences again? If they stay in the west, where out west? Is San Antonio big enough to support both the Spurs and the Coyotes in the same season? Kansas City would not have competition between early January and early April, but can it support 3 teams?