Samson's Flow

Bump - Have we had any Liger movie reference sightings? Paging Liger to youtube.com...

Is 31 old? I thought Moulson was going to be a hot commodity in the FA market last year. Shocked he came back.

I guess all my breakdowns today can't stop everyone from panicking. oh well... :unsure:

My example in this case is Matt Moulson. He liked being near Ontario where his family is, and our offer was reasonable in terms of money. I'm sure he could have gotten more on the open market, but every player isn't always just about the money.

:lol: You must be going to different bars than I frequent...

I agree. I think the tone of my post might have read that I thought they should be doing this immediately, but the team needs to establish competitiveness/dominance of the MAC before another conference would even be interested. That means a couple more strong seasons and NCAA tournament berths before even discussing.

If UB athletics as a whole want to make any progress, they need to move out of the MAC and into a stronger conference. Specifically, there should be a focus on bringing a D1 hockey program to UB, given the proximity to Ontario and the support of hockey in western NY. The basketball team will only ever make the NCAA tourney by winning the MAC tournament at this point. That could change in a larger mid-major conference.

That's like prettiest girl left at the bar at 4am. Not a real great distinction :P

Fixed. :flirt:

So with the basic outline of 1st gets 20% chance and 14th gets the lowest chance, I would have done it as follows by breaking the odds changes into tiers 11-14 gets a 0.5% bump, 8-10 gets a 1% bump, 4-7 gets a 1.5% bump and 2-3 gets a 2% bump, and the top spot gets 20% (what amounts to a 5% bump). Disclaimer: This took me way longer than I thought it would, its a pain to get them all to add up to 100% while maintaining tiered additions.

Then why the 1.5% jump from 10th to 9th when 8th to 7th has only a 0.5% increase? That's not even close to a smooth distribution.

I have a feeling that is exactly how they did it. That jump of 1.5% from 10th to 9th is worth losing a meaningless game at the end. It almost doubles your (slim) chances at McDavid.

Not for nothing, but lately with the addition of stable ownership, quite a few free agents have been interested in Buffalo because of the close proximity to Ontario, where many players grew up and have family. It isn't always about the money.

I haven't looked at the odds beyond the top 5, but I wonder why the NHL has such a variable distribution from 4-14. Each change in position has a seemingly random change in odds from .50 to 2.0 Like why is there a 1% decrease each spot from 4 to 7, then all of a sudden 0.5%, 1.0% then 1.5% from 7 to 10. Seems rather arbitrary. :unsure:

Agreed. We are still the worst team in the league. It is a pretty low percentage that each of those individual events would go against us.

We're all free men. This isn't early 19th century Alabama. :nana:

No doubt. I have no problem with having Tyler Ennis on this team, because he has demonstrated an ability to control the puck and make plays when given little to no space. This year with him being basically our only scoring option, the defense has keyed on him and given him no space to work with, and he has found success despite.

You're right, how can I argue with that iron-clad logic :lol: :lol:

No doubt, but I will note that the 6'4" 230lb player will almost always knock over the smaller player. Having more of these size players mitigates some of the volatility in shooting percentage and puck luck events. I'm looking to identify the most statistically repeatable events for sucess.

The schedule with these teams noted is why I landed on the 3-5-1 record. Taking 7 points from those teams is IMO the worst case scenario. Even with that worst case scenario the Coyotes would need to be pretty putrid to take last from us. Even with how bad Arizona was, they still only made up a little ground on us. As evidenced by yesterday's game, they are still professional athletes, odds say they are bound to win a game or two as a result.

I couldn't give two flying how the team is built if they are perennial contenders. Give me a team that wins and i'm happy. I don't care if they a filled with a whole team of uber talented Gerbe sized players. That being said, I think the most consistent team is one that is based on size and physicality. High scoring run-and-gun teams are way too dependant on shooting percentage and save percentage, which can be highly volatile in the short-term.

I understand that the Coyotes have a perceived much worse team since the trade deadline. The point I was trying to get at is best demonstrated by: "Sabres 3-5-1 for 54 pts, means Coyotes go 0-7-1 to finish at 53 pts." I would suggest that most around here don't think the Sabres will win 3 more games, but even with us winning 3 games and taking a fourth to an OT loss, the Coyotes still have to basically go winless to get below our mark of 54 points. As the number of games goes down, it takes a much more drastic win loss descrepancy to make up the current 5 point gap. Even in the above scenario, if the Coyotes go 1-7-0 (which is really horrible), the Sabres still take 30th due to ROW tiebreaker. Most Coyotes fan(s) would say 1-7-0 would be a great way to finish the season, but based on the point spread that still wouldn't be enough.

Excellent news. We need him to stick around in order to build this program to the mid-major level it could/should be.

Oh of course. Fans are gonna overreact on every minute of hockey left. *CHL speak off* Just to provide perspective, I would safely say that the Sabres (currently at 47 pts with 9 games remaining) will go 2-6-1 the rest of the year, which would put us at 52 points. In this scenario, the Coyotes games account for the two wins. The Coyotes (currently at 52 pts with 8 games remaining) would have to go 0-8-0 the rest of the year to tie us, and would still finish 29th due to the ROW tiebreaker. Let's go further: (note all of the below scenarios are with ARI losing both head to head games with BUF) Sabres 3-5-1 for 54 pts, means Coyotes go 0-7-1 to finish at 53 pts. Sabres 3-4-2 for 55 pts, means Coyotes go 1-7-0 or 0-6-2 to finish at 54 pts. Sabres 4-3-2 for 57 pts, still means Coyotes have to go at best 2-6-0 or 1-5-2 to finish at 56 pts. I really don't think Buffalo has any chance of performing at .500 or better, so I stopped the analysis there. By my eye, the Sabres have to perform way above their season performance and the Coyotes need to basically go winless for this to even be close, and even then we have the tiebreaker to finish DFL. Edit: not to mention if the Sabres split with the Coyotes, it's basically over. All of the above analysis was worst case scenario we lose both to Arizona.

I would say that the Buffalo luck has been about the same in the long-term as every other franchise, it's just that all of our high-profile playoff/key game luck events have all been on the bad side of the ledger.