IKnowPhysics

Shootout percentages for Buffalo: Pominville 3/3, 100% Vanek 2/2, 100% Ennis 1/2, 50% Miller 1/5, 0.800

‎............................................________ ....................................,.-'"...................``~., .............................,.-"..................................."-., .........................,/...............................................":, .....................,?......................................................, .................../...........................................................,} ................./......................................................,:`^`..} .............../...................................................,:"........./ ..............?.....__.........................................:`.........../ ............./__.(....."~-,_..............................,:`........../ .........../(_...."~,_........"~,_....................,:`........_/ ..........{.._$;_......"=,_......."-,_.......,.-~-,},.~";/....} ...........((.....*~_......."=-._......";,,./`..../"............../ ...,,,___.`~,......"~.,....................`.....}............../ ............(....`=-,,.......`........................(......;_,,-" ............/.`~,......`-...................................../ .............`~.*-,.....................................|,./.....,__ ,,_..........}.>-._...................................|..............`=~-, .....`=~-,__......`,................................. ...................`=~-,,.,............................... ................................`:,,...........................`..............__ .....................................`=-,...................,%`>--==`` ........................................_..........._,-%.......` ..................................., So, uh, good call Darcy. Price was too high and if we offer sheeted, we'd end up with nothing.

PETA's press release: http://www.peta.org/...--Fur-Coat.aspx I think the fur coat should now be accompanied by a faux ###### skin hat and a pair of faux rabbit gloves. Either that or every "coat of the game" is a new coat and is then donated to a reasonable local charity or shelter.

Nice work, kid. I was really able to take advantage of a lot of opportunities at UB and it launched me into great things.

nsfw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHTEImx8BLs

This is just an attempt by the status quo to distract us from the team's performance blargh blargh blargh narrative blargh blargh.

PETA was tackled on an old episode of Penn & Teller's Bull$hit. One of the surprising things I learned is that they have a donation check box on many, many local, state, and federal tax forms, which, by design, is extremely successful at bringing in donations from pet owners and people who like animals, but people don't realize that the organization is fundamentally opposed to people keeping animals as pets (even dogs, cats, and fish).

Perfection. Sacco: This is not about keeping your promise and it's not about following your heart. It's about security! O'Reilly: What is that supposed to mean? Sacco: MONEY! He's got a lot of MONEY! O'Reilly: I hate you for saying that, you smug bastard! Sacco: If you leave here, I hate you!

Fools. Likin' Ott.

###### themselves over because they didn't get a rule clarification from the league before doing something highly risky. So it turns out not only is Feaster retarded, he's arrogant.

So Nabokov says to the goal judge, "you don't have to turn on the red light."

TSN picked up the story and is now reporting this as fact. Sounds like we'll never know, but a slightly similar circumstance led to Evgeni Nabokov ending up on the island, and the NHL didn't step in on that trainwreck.

Because O'Reilly's an RFA, if the Avs signed him or traded him, he wouldn't have to clear waivers. But there's no clarification for offer sheeting. My guess is that an adaptation/interpretation of the rule would be expanded to include offer sheeting (which is effectively a similar transaction to a trade acted upon an RFA), because they offered a relaxed interpretation about Nashville/Radulov, but that's one hell of a risk by Feaster- unless he had inside written information that guaranteed that interpretation.

Incredible.

@FakeJoeSacco I'm gonna trade the ###### out of that kid at the deadline next year.

THIS JUST IN: SABRES KEEP TYLER ENNIS.' But Jordan Leopold and Drew Stafford also rumored to be part of the deal.

This is the good part. Unusual signs of intelligence coming from Calgary.

If you're playing along at home, here's the evolution of trade proposals for O'Reilly thus far (sorry for any I left out, most package deals were ignored, parentheses include stuff coming back): 2/13/13 10:30 Sekera Catenacci 2/13/13 12:00 Leopold Adam 2/13/13 12:11 Foligno Pysyk 2/13/13 12:25 Ennis 2/13/13 12:25 Stafford McNabb 2/13/13 12:35 Stafford Leopold 2/13/13 12:46 Stafford Pysyk 2/13/13 19:49 Stafford Pysyk 2/13/13 20:09 Stafford Sekera Adam (+2nd rounder) 2/14/13 12:25 Sekera Adam 2/15/13 10:02 Stafford Pysyk 2/15/13 10:47 Ennis Pysyk 2/15/13 14:33 Foligno Armia 2/18/13 03:33 Sekera Girgensons 2/18/13 20:15 Stafford 2/20/13 12:56 Sekera Brennan 2/27/13 13:04 Miller Stafford (+Pickard) 2/28/13 09:58 Miller (+Pickard) I bolded the ###### I would actually consider and italicized the ###### I laughed at.

Also, Myers has an NMC.

Corsi number was devised more than six years ago by a guy with a graduate engineering degree who happened to work in hockey. It's not a system used for coaching players, let alone goalies, just a little bit of math to look at results of games. And besides, we've already seen that you're completely biased against using advanced statistics.

Thanks. The Corsi is an indirect measure of how the player performs and it should be taken in context of some of the other stats. To get a good handle on what it actually means in reality, you have to break down the context a little, and especially consider quality of competition. Quality of competition is much more of a factor determined by coaching decisions and ends up being one of the crucial stats used for examining player usage. Lots of other factors can influence shot attempts. - Linemates can influence this. If you had some player that attempted 1000 shots in a season, it would skew the Corsi for the players that always play with them, but maybe those players actually perform better or get more assists because of the vast shot differential. Likewise, if your all star player plays with a bunch of schmoes, his Corsi could be lowered, but his performance would also likely be hurt too by playing with those players. They're all tied together, but in reality, so is the performance of the players that play together. - Coaching styles could influence Corsi numbers too- lines of players that are told to sacrifice offense to provide defense can influence the Corsi numbers. Regehr last year, Gaustad last year, Ott this year, have all had low Corsi numbers recently with us- not only do they not shoot a lot, their linemates haven't exactly shot the lights out either. But depending on the situation, especially QoC, maybe they're struggling at preventing the other team from taking shots. In summary, just as a player's real performance is a product of lots of variables including coaching, linesmates, quality of competition, the Corsi number for that player can be influenced by those things as well. Corsi might tell you how well a player performed, but more importantly, the other related stats might tell you why he performed that way.

Gracias.

######, I think I figured it out. It's complicated to explain, so stick with me here and please feel free to ask questions. The result doesn't account for all of our problems, but it raises some big red flags to me. Here we go... I've been looking at the 5-on-5 Corsi numbers (use this link in a new tab/window if you;d like to play along) in the context of the Corsi Rel QoC. [side note from the stats in that link: Kaleta does a great job drawing penalties. He nets about 2.4 minutes of drawn penalty time per game after you subtract the penalties he takes. He's a walking powerplay.] For those not in the know, and I wasn't really before this evening, here's the glossary for Corsi stuff. This is the hard stuff: Examples to help folks get the idea what the Corsi stats can tell you: An interesting aside using Corsi numbers, not relavant to the big point, but kind of interesting: The main point: If you sort the team by Corsi Rel Quality of Competition (highest to lowest/most negative). Take a look at the players that have played against the highest competition. Ignore Pardy and Porter if you like. Then eyeball who has negative Corsi numbers: Brennan, Leopold, Weber, Gerbe, Ott, Myers, Hecht... These are players who are struggling (bad Corsi) but face the competition's best players (high Corsi Rel QoC). This begs the question of which of your players you want to face the opponent's best players. A third line that struggles against those players (bad Corsi)? Or your top line that does great offensively but struggles defensively (even Corsi)? Pominville, Hodgson, Vanek, Stafford, and Ennis are all evenish at Corsi, but play very hard competition. Our opposing teams are sending their best players to successfully shut down our best line and then sending their best players to "pick on" (ie get favorable matchups vs) our struggling players. Our shutdown-type players (Ehrhoff, Sekera, Kaleta, Sulzer) are seeing the weakest competition. And according to Corsi, our defense (outside of Ehrhoff and Sulzer) is playing like trash: Regehr, Weber, Sekera, Leopold, and Myers are all in the league's bottom 24 players (that have played 5+ games) in Corsi. (Ehrhoff is 15th best by the way.) And the should-be shutdown players on the 3rd and 4th lines are playing horrible defense (never mind contributing offensively). At the end of the day, our defensemen are mostly awful, our weakest forwards are ending up in horrible matchups, and our best defensive role players don't play against the opposition's best players, and our best offensive players STILL see the hardest competition. If these stats are telling, then I could try to recommend a path forward:

Oh, I know.

Post lockout, our best teams did a lot of "rolling four lines" which ignored zone starts. Ruff also played chess, not with zone starts, but with line matchups (especially at home) so that should be figured upon as a reason why his zone start stats look like a mess.