Potpourri

I didn't want to post a whole bunch of playoff predictions because I don't care. No Oilers of course but even besides that, I'm just not that into it this year. There doesn't seem to be a lot of compelling storylines for some reason, but it just might be that it's supposed to be in the 20's this weekend. So no predictions. Go, I dunno, Montreal!

I heard some interesting reaction to TSN's overblown-yet-still-cheap-looking production of the NHL's lottery draft. Some people think the lottery is a waste, just give teams the picks in the order they finished in. As for teams tanking, who cares, their season's been lost for months anyways. The other side thought that the draft odds (where the last placed team, Tampa Bay, had a 48% chance of winning the first overall pick) favored the Lightning too much, and would rather see more balanced odds that gave all the bottom five teams a legitimat shot at the top pick.

Here's what I, the smartest, wisest, most insightful writer on this blog, would do. The whole point of the draft is to re-alocated talent to bad teams to counter the balance of power in the league. Right? But, you don't want teams intentially losing games to gain a better draft pick since that's wrong and fans are paying $200 a ticket, hence the need for some kind of element of chance. Right? You also cannot create draft rules based on specific types of drafts, such as ones with a clearcut number one pick like this year (or 2005, 2004, or next year). Right? Though even in drafts that have no dominant player at the top, teams with the top pick have a huge advantage; whether they keep the pick or trade it away, they have a big step over other teams in terms of how they rebuild their team. Right? So why should only the dead-last team be given such a heavily-weighted opportunity for the top pick? ALL of the bottom five NHL teams are terrible, there's nothing that makes the last-placed team dramatically worse (and thus more deserving of the top pick) than the other four. According to NHL.com, here are the point totals for the bottom five teams in the standings over the last three years since the lockout:

2007-2008
Tampa Bay-71
Los Angeles-71
Atlanta-76
St. Louis-79
New York Islanders-79

2006-2007
Philedephia-56
Phoenix-67
Los Angeles-68
Washington-70
Chicago-71

2005-2006

St. Louis-57
Pittsburg-58
Chicago-65
Washington-70
Boston-74

So between the last and fifth-last place teams, there's been a difference of 8, 15 and 17 points, going in reverse order. A small sample size of course, but the spread is shrinking. My guess is that trend will probably continue because of all the three-point games. In any case, since all five lottery teams are terrible, why not take their point totals, add them all together and give them the exact weighted percentage that they earned. For example, this season the bottom five teams combined to earn 376 points. Here's the percentage breakdown for each team:

Tampa Bay-18.8%
Los Angeles-18.8%
Atlanta-20.2%
St. Louis-21%
New York Islanders-21%

That adds up to 99.8% because of how I rounded it off, but you get the idea. So, take the percentage of points each team contributed to the combined total, REVERSE them so that, in this case, Tampa and Los Angeles each have a 21% chance at winning the lottery, and draw teams' chances accordingly. I'm going to leave this proposal as is for now to see if any problems show up. Yup, already see some, but I'll leave those for another post.


This Blue Jays-Oakland series is pretty awful to watch as a Jays' fan. The A's are in fullblown rebuild mode, the Jays don't face any of Oakland's top two pitchers in the three game series, Toronto comes in having swept the defending World Series champs, they're in Toronto, etc. As of the eighth inning of game three, Toronto's best relief pitcher has blown two games (9-8 and 6-3), they've been outpitched by a journeyman and two rookie starters, and they've left 46 runners on base, an average of 15.3 per game, or 1.703 per inning (for a reference point, a pitcher allowing 1.703 baserunners per inning is most likely throwing out the Ceremonial First Pitch from his Ceremonial Wheelchair). Maybe they salvage one game, as the bottom of the ninth starts with Frank Thomas up...