How do the Sabres fare on this 6 game (5 on the WC) road trip?

[nfreeman]

17 hours ago, Taro T said:

They're at NHL 0.500.  They have 6 teams to leap frog to get into the playoffs.  NHL 0.500 only gets you to 82 points which even in a weirdly low points total season will still miss the playoffs by a wide margin.

The "real" 0.500 doesn't have any bearing on whether they make the playoffs or not.

Get to NHL 0.600 and they'll be in.  Regardless of whether they end up with no additional OTLs or get 16 more.

 

Well, we both know that NHL .500 is a freaking joke and is utterly meaningless.  And I've already admitted that you are right that 0.600 points percentage is more accurate than real .500. 

However:

- Real .500 is very closely correlated with making/missing the playoffs -- i.e. teams that finish below real .500 very seldom make it and teams that finish above it usually make it (and teams that are 2 over almost always make it). 

- For example, last season, every team that was above real .500 made the playoffs, and every team that was below real .500 missed the playoffs (except one -- the Habs, who were 1 game under).

- There is NFW that I am going to mentally keep track of the number of games this pathetic franchise has played -- so I am not going to be able to determine where they are relative to .600 points percentage without checking the standings -- which is more effort than I'm prepared to dedicate to them at present.  But I can remember pretty easily where they are relative to real .500.

So while I won't criticize your purist approach on this, I'm not going to adopt it either.  The quick-and-dirty approach works almost as well and is much easier -- and this franchise doesn't deserve any better just yet.

 

[PASabreFan]

28 minutes ago, nfreeman said:

 

Well, we both know that NHL .500 is a freaking joke and is utterly meaningless.  And I've already admitted that you are right that 0.600 points percentage is more accurate than real .500. 

However:

- Real .500 is very closely correlated with making/missing the playoffs -- i.e. teams that finish below real .500 very seldom make it and teams that finish above it usually make it (and teams that are 2 over almost always make it). 

- For example, last season, every team that was above real .500 made the playoffs, and every team that was below real .500 missed the playoffs (except one -- the Habs, who were 1 game under).

- There is NFW that I am going to mentally keep track of the number of games this pathetic franchise has played -- so I am not going to be able to determine where they are relative to .600 points percentage without checking the standings -- which is more effort than I'm prepared to dedicate to them at present.  But I can remember pretty easily where they are relative to real .500.

So while I won't criticize your purist approach on this, I'm not going to adopt it either.  The quick-and-dirty approach works almost as well and is much easier -- and this franchise doesn't deserve any better just yet.

 

You've checked out of it, innit?