pretend the 10 game streak and 4 of 15 combined together for a fairly normal 14-11 record, and then it doesn't seem so hard.
Yes, that's correct. We probably won't have a 4-10 streak or whatever either.
We don't really know what the real sabres are at this point, if the 10 game win streak isn't representative of the real sabres, and the whatever since isn't representative of the real sabres either. I would argue combining them together is also not really representative, at least for predicting how the team will perform going forward in the short term - you wouldn't say that a team that won 10 in a row and then lost 10 in a row would be most likely to go 5-5 the next 10 games.
or use the real record of 14-7-4 over the last 25 games. (we're only 3 games under .500 over the last 15 games, not 7)
We need to stop pretending that "losses" in OT or the shootout are losses. Mathematically, they count as TIES. The NHL simply tricked the fans into thinking ties went away, when they made them more prevalent than prior to the "loser point". A game tied at the end of regulation is tied. You simply play a bonus game to get a win. Loser still keeps the regulation tie
But losses in OT or shootout ARE losses, and people put an unreasonable amount of significance on "NHL .500" or .500 pts % when W/L (regardless of type of loss) is a better at describing when a team is above or below average. For example, right now there are 23 teams at .500 pts% or above. But when looking at W/L, there are 15 teams at even W/L or better . So just looking at W/L is going to be a much better indicator of whether a team is going to make or miss the playoffs.
And the reason it works is that everybody gets ties. Last season the most OT/SO losses were 14 and the least was 5. But at the bubble of each conference, it's more like teams are within 3-4 OT/SO losses of each other.
Another way of looking at it: Last year just 3 teams with 41 wins or more missed the playoffs. Of those 3, only 1 (St. Louis) got beat out by a team with fewer wins. STL was 44-32-6 but COL got the wild card with 43-30-9. No team with fewer than 41 wins made the playoffs last year. TOR did in 16-17 with 40 wins and beat out NYI with 41 wins and TBL with 42 wins, but everyone else in the conference had 39 wins or fewer. MIN did in 15-16 with 38 wins (and 11 OT/SO losses) but the western conference wasn't great that year, only COL had more wins and missed the playoffs with 39, and everyone else who missed had 35 wins or fewer. Look at this years standings, if all you did was rank everybody by wins and use points as the tiebreaker, the only change you'd see would be that PIT and CBJ would swap 2/3 in the Metro, and a few of the teams at the bottom of the western conference would shuffle.
So in short, win/loss is what's important, OT/SO losses getting a point only really matters at maybe being the difference for 1 team a year getting in with 1 or 2 fewer wins than another 1 or 2 teams, and .500 doesn't really mean much of anything important at all.
Laughed when KO got called for goalie interference and Ray couldn't explain satisfactorily to RJ the reasons why. RJ goes "you are paid to know stuff". Rayzor: "No, I'm here because of my looks!"
Yeah I was pretty pissed there was no challenge from housley there, and just as pissed that our own broadcast crew didn't even know it was challengeable.
Anyways, nice win last night. Lots of good and not a lot of bad.
