Around the NHL 2018-2019

[Marions Piazza]

14 minutes ago, LTS said:

Well, then how do you define who the best team is?  

People say the best team should have won.  I say, if the team won, they were the best.  There's really no other way to put it.  Any reason for that specific series points to the team that won doing things (or having less fragile players, etc.) than the other team.  They were the best at that moment in time and the reality is, that's the best we can do.  If you want to begin to break down every factor that goes into it, you can.  But the outcome remains the same.

Generally speaking the best team should win it all, but that just doens't happen every year. in 05-06 i believe that we were definitely the best team, but, we had injuries and we didn't win. 

[LTS]

Just now, Marions Piazza said:

Generally speaking the best team should win it all, but that just doens't happen every year. in 05-06 i believe that we were definitely the best team, but, we had injuries and we didn't win. 

Like I said, what defines the best team.  You even lead your statement with "i believe".  The "best team" is not easily quantifiable.  The Sabres were the best team in the regular season as realized in their point total.

My point is, if "best team" is subjective, then any plan that calls for the "best team" to have the "easiest path" by playing "lesser teams" is also subjective.  The only thing for certain is who wins.  So, to be the best you have to win.

[WildCard]

2 minutes ago, LTS said:

Like I said, what defines the best team.  You even lead your statement with "i believe".  The "best team" is not easily quantifiable.  The Sabres were the best team in the regular season as realized in their point total.

My point is, if "best team" is subjective, then any plan that calls for the "best team" to have the "easiest path" by playing "lesser teams" is also subjective.  The only thing for certain is who wins.  So, to be the best you have to win.

The 9-7 Giants beat the 16-0 Patriots. The Patriots were objectively the best team, they had a bad game. 

[LTS]

6 minutes ago, WildCard said:

The 9-7 Giants beat the 16-0 Patriots. The Patriots were objectively the best team, they had a bad game. 

Explain to me how this is objective if they lost.  You can want it to be objective, but it isn't.

Objectively, the Patriots had the best record in the regular season.  They were 16-0.  The Patriots even managed to beat the Giants in the last game of the regular season, 38-35. 

You are saying they had a bad game.  I could argue that the Giants forced them to play that bad.  The Giants were better and capable for making it happen.  The only measure we have is that the Patriots lost.  That is objective.  It is subjective to say the Patriots had a bad game.  In the end, it was a 1 game series... if you include the final game of the season at best you are at 50/50.

In hockey, the teams play best of 7 series, so the "better" team has to have 4 bad games.  This makes the statistical outcome even harder to overcome, so if it is overcome then shouldn't it lend even MORE support to saying the team that won is "better" since they had to win 4 times against the subjectively "better" team?

 

[WildCard]

2 minutes ago, LTS said:

Explain to me how this is objective if they lost.  You can want it to be objective, but it isn't.

Objectively, the Patriots had the best record in the regular season.  They were 16-0.  The Patriots even managed to beat the Giants in the last game of the regular season, 38-35. 

You are saying they had a bad game.  I could argue that the Giants forced them to play that bad.  The Giants were better and capable for making it happen.  The only measure we have is that the Patriots lost.  That is objective.  It is subjective to say the Patriots had a bad game.  In the end, it was a 1 game series... if you include the final game of the season at best you are at 50/50.

In hockey, the teams play best of 7 series, so the "better" team has to have 4 bad games.  This makes the statistical outcome even harder to overcome, so if it is overcome then shouldn't it lend even MORE support to saying the team that won is "better" since they had to win 4 times against the subjectively "better" team?

 

Because if the Patriots and Giants played enough times to have an actual sample size the Patriots would destroy them; if they played 1000 times that Pats would win 900+ of those

7 is still a small sample size

[LTS]

Just now, WildCard said:

Because if the Patriots and Giants played enough times to have an actual sample size the Patriots would destroy them; if they played 1000 times that Pats would win 900+ of those

7 is still a small sample size

But they did not.. so you are expecting it to be the case.  However, the only other game that compares the GIants to the Patriots was decided by 3 points.  That's hardly domination and enough to warrant "destruction".  The Giants could have been built to be competitive with the Patriots that season.  We'll never know, but we can make subjective guesses.  I'm not arguing against that.  I'm only saying that the "best" team won the SB because regardless of any other opinions.. they did, in fact, win.

 

[Taro T]

44 minutes ago, LTS said:

My point about the regular season is that it's not used to determine who the best team is.... so finishing with 117 or 94 points is irrelevant as long as you get in.  In theory the 117 point team should win... but we know better.

As for the easiest route to the championship, let me tiny this a different way.  D isregarding the other conference...

Your team plays the teams that finished 8, 4, 2 and gets to the championship.

Your team plays the teams that finished 2, 4, 8 and gets to the championship.  

What was the easier road?  They are technically the same although most people would say the first is easier.  I would say that the first provides the most likely opportunity to move into each successive round, but when amassed as the entire path the difficulty remains the same.  You played the same 3 teams and had to beat them. I am not accounting for financials and a desire to play more games.

Examine the first scenario... a common rebuttal would be that 4 could get taken out by 5 and then you;'d play 5.  Well, if that's the case would you consider 5 a tougher team than 4?  I mean, they just beat them.

In the end... you have to beat the best team or hope they lose along the way.  If they lose, are they the best team?

But the regular season is the proxy that is used to seed the playoff teams & we do not have a better way to perform that seeding.  And for you to say the regular season doesn't determine who is better implies that you should have no problem with 1 playing 2 and 3 playing 4.  I mean they have to beat whoever is next up on the plate to eventually become champions, right, the order is completely immaterial.  Except when it isn't.  

Assuming the team you are looking at facing the 2, 4, 8 seed or the 8, 4, 2 happens to be the SAME team then playing 2, 4, 8 was upon entering the playoffs was the harder schedule as the expected preplayoff seeding of the opponents would have been necessarily higher though upsets occurred along the way making in hindsight the 2 paths equivalent.  But, heading in, with the info available at the time the seedings were set, the 1st path had a higher expected difficulty and the lower ranked team should have to face that schedule with the greater expected difficulty.

In the system I proposed, the team that performed better in  the regular season receives a benefit which doesn't go away due to luck outside of its own control.  (Unlike the NCAA tournament where the 16th seed luckinginto the 1 seed getting food poisoning at their pregame meal now has the easiest path forward though they did nothing to earn that other than capitalize upon their luck.)  As the benefit for being top seed overallis huge - they always host the lower seeded opponent of the 2 available, thereis anincentive to strive forit making the regular season more relevant.  And the lower seeded team still can show that though they appeared to be a lesser team, they can still win it all; they simply have a much tougher road.

[WildCard]

1 minute ago, LTS said:

But they did not.. so you are expecting it to be the case.  However, the only other game that compares the GIants to the Patriots was decided by 3 points.  That's hardly domination and enough to warrant "destruction".  The Giants could have been built to be competitive with the Patriots that season.  We'll never know, but we can make subjective guesses.  I'm not arguing against that.  I'm only saying that the "best" team won the SB because regardless of any other opinions.. they did, in fact, win.

I'm expecting that for a very good reason. We can make highly educated expectations to the point where they can be deemed a reasonable conclusion.

[Taro T]

1 hour ago, MakeSabresGrr8Again said:

The problem is more that the wildcard team could actually be the best team. May have snuck into playoffs because of early season injuries or other events that caused them to end season on a good note.

The WC team COULD be the best team, and has the opportunity to prove that through the playoff system.  But why should they have an easier road than a team that demonstrated through the seeding system (aka the regular season) to presumptively be the better team?  If they should, then the regular season has even less relevance than it already does.  

Edited December 18, 2018 by Taro T

[Marions Piazza]

29 minutes ago, LTS said:

Like I said, what defines the best team.  You even lead your statement with "i believe".  The "best team" is not easily quantifiable.  The Sabres were the best team in the regular season as realized in their point total.

My point is, if "best team" is subjective, then any plan that calls for the "best team" to have the "easiest path" by playing "lesser teams" is also subjective.  The only thing for certain is who wins.  So, to be the best you have to win.

not to be a pain, but in 05-06 as i referenced, they did not have the highest point total, they were 5th at the end of the season. Despite being 5th in the regular season, my argument is that they were the best team in the league derailed on our path to the cup by injuries. if only say two of Connolly, Tallinder, Teppo, Kalinen, and Mckee were hurt, I would say they win the cup easily but sadly that didn't happen.

i guess it all doesn't matter, we can go back and forth for days, i think the best team doesn't always win, we'll just agree to disagree on that.

[LTS]

1 minute ago, Taro T said:

But the regular season is the proxy that is used to seed the playoff teams & we do not have a better way to perform that seeding.  And for you to say the regular season doesn't determine who is better implies that you should have no problem with 1 playing 2 and 3 playing 4.  I mean they have to beat whoever is next up on the plate to eventually become champions, right, the order is completely immaterial.  Except when it isn't.  

Assuming the team you are looking at facing the 2, 4, 8 seed or the 8, 4, 2 happens to be the SAME team then playing 2, 4, 8 was upon entering the playoffs was the harder schedule as the expected preplayoff seeding of the opponents would have been necessarily higher though upsets occurred along the way making in hindsight the 2 paths equivalent.  But, heading in, with the info available at the time the seedings were set, the 1st path had a higher expected difficulty and the lower ranked team should have to face that schedule with the greater expected difficulty.

In the system I proposed, the team that performed better in  the regular season receives a benefit which doesn't go away due to luck outside of its own control.  (Unlike the NCAA tournament where the 16th seed luckinginto the 1 seed getting food poisoning at their pregame meal now has the easiest path forward though they did nothing to earn that other than capitalize upon their luck.)  As the benefit for being top seed overallis huge - they always host the lower seeded opponent of the 2 available, thereis anincentive to strive forit making the regular season more relevant.  And the lower seeded team still can show that though they appeared to be a lesser team, they can still win it all; they simply have a much tougher road.

The first bolded: I don't care who plays who.  You just have to win.

To second: Yes.. the same teams. If you finish first and end up playing the second tea first or the 8th team first... the path remains the same. If an upset occurs then you have a break in your statistical ranking and as such you have to question why it happened.  There's expected outcome and results.  The results are indisputable aren't they?

 

1 minute ago, WildCard said:

I'm expecting that for a very good reason. We can make highly educated expectations to the point where they can be deemed a reasonable conclusion.

See above... you can use statistics to make an educated and reasonable conclusion.  So, when that conclusion does not happen what do you do? Because it did not happen with the Patriots.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

1 hour ago, MakeSabresGrr8Again said:

The problem is more that the wildcard team could actually be the best team. May have snuck into playoffs because of early season injuries or other events that caused them to end season on a good note.

They didn't call it wildcard back then, but in 1999 the Sabres were the 7th seed in the Prince of Wales, IIRC.

[LTS]

2 minutes ago, Marions Piazza said:

not to be a pain, but in 05-06 as i referenced, they did not have the highest point total, they were 5th at the end of the season. Despite being 5th in the regular season, my argument is that they were the best team in the league derailed on our path to the cup by injuries. if only say two of Connolly, Tallinder, Teppo, Kalinen, and Mckee were hurt, I would say they win the cup easily but sadly that didn't happen.

i guess it all doesn't matter, we can go back and forth for days, i think the best team doesn't always win, we'll just agree to disagree on that.

So you are subjectively defining the "best team".

My argument is that objectively, the "best team" is the one who wins.  Everything else is an excuse as to why it didn't happen.  

[Marions Piazza]

3 minutes ago, LTS said:

So you are subjectively defining the "best team".

My argument is that objectively, the "best team" is the one who wins.  Everything else is an excuse as to why it didn't happen.  

we don't agree, let's move on

[WildCard]

18 minutes ago, LTS said:

See above... you can use statistics to make an educated and reasonable conclusion.  So, when that conclusion does not happen what do you do? Because it did not happen with the Patriots.

I run the test again

[pi2000]

17 minutes ago, LTS said:

So you are subjectively defining the "best team".

My argument is that objectively, the "best team" is the one who wins.  Everything else is an excuse as to why it didn't happen.  

wrong.gif

The best team doesn't always win.

[shrader]

16 minutes ago, LTS said:

So you are subjectively defining the "best team".

My argument is that objectively, the "best team" is the one who wins.  Everything else is an excuse as to why it didn't happen.  

The playoffs are a sprint and the regular season is a marathon.  What it takes to win one is very different than what it takes to win the other.  We tend to focus on the Cup itself for obvious reasons, but personally, winning the President's Trophy is one hell of an accomplishment too.  I have a hard time labeling one as the best vs. the other since the rules are so drastically different, but I can say for sure that I definitely enjoyed the ride that was the regular season in 06-07.

[Taro T]

6 minutes ago, LTS said:

The first bolded: I don't care who plays who.  You just have to win.

To second: Yes.. the same teams. If you finish first and end up playing the second tea first or the 8th team first... the path remains the same. If an upset occurs then you have a break in your statistical ranking and as such you have to question why it happened.  There's expected outcome and results.  The results are indisputable aren't they?

 

See above... you can use statistics to make an educated and reasonable conclusion.  So, when that conclusion does not happen what do you do? Because it did not happen with the Patriots.

To the 1st if that truly is your viewpoint, really don't understand why you are in this discussion.  Any playoff format would appear to be fine from your perspective.

Though your comment regarding Cheatriots Jints was directed elsewhere, that is a great example.  The Cheatriots earned the top seeding and (at least through their conference) had the easiest path which they'd earned.

The Jints had a very slow start (IIRC Coughlin was 1 loss away around week 5 from being fired (could have that confused with their other SB run under him)) but were playing well enough down the stretch to sneak into the dance where anything could happen.  They had a WC berth and as such had a much tougher road to the SB than the Cheatriots had.  They hadn't earned a 1st round bye & didn't receive 1 appropriately.  (Though apparently based upon your other response I replied to, you wouldn't have taken issue with them receiving a 1st round bye as a WC as they earned it through their play in January and you play whomever you are told to play. ;))  They did though, through their play in the play in the playoffs earn the right to play for the SB, and through their play during the SB did earn the right to be Champions.  

[MakeSabresGrr8Again]

3 hours ago, Marions Piazza said:

not to be a pain, but in 05-06 as i referenced, they did not have the highest point total, they were 5th at the end of the season. Despite being 5th in the regular season, my argument is that they were the best team in the league derailed on our path to the cup by injuries. if only say two of Connolly, Tallinder, Teppo, Kalinen, and Mckee were hurt, I would say they win the cup easily but sadly that didn't happen.

i guess it all doesn't matter, we can go back and forth for days, i think the best team doesn't always win, we'll just agree to disagree on that.

I agree.

[WildCard]

Tyler Myers and Erik Karlsson are the same age. Just throwin' that out there

[josie]

12 minutes ago, WildCard said:

Tyler Myers and Erik Karlsson are the same age. Just throwin' that out there

... and they're both younger than me.

I dunno why I mentally had those boys about 5 years older than that... *cries into anti-wrinkle cream*

[LTS]

3 hours ago, Taro T said:

To the 1st if that truly is your viewpoint, really don't understand why you are in this discussion.  Any playoff format would appear to be fine from your perspective.

Though your comment regarding Cheatriots Jints was directed elsewhere, that is a great example.  The Cheatriots earned the top seeding and (at least through their conference) had the easiest path which they'd earned.

The Jints had a very slow start (IIRC Coughlin was 1 loss away around week 5 from being fired (could have that confused with their other SB run under him)) but were playing well enough down the stretch to sneak into the dance where anything could happen.  They had a WC berth and as such had a much tougher road to the SB than the Cheatriots had.  They hadn't earned a 1st round bye & didn't receive 1 appropriately.  (Though apparently based upon your other response I replied to, you wouldn't have taken issue with them receiving a 1st round bye as a WC as they earned it through their play in January and you play whomever you are told to play. ;))  They did though, through their play in the play in the playoffs earn the right to play for the SB, and through their play during the SB did earn the right to be Champions.  

The NFL playoff format rewards the best team with a bye.  This is inherently different than the NHL which does not.  Objectively, all you can say is the team has to play one less game. It doesn't mean their last two aren't harder than another team's three. And it doesn't matter, you either win or you do not. If you do not, you weren't the best. You were successful, but not successful enough.

As for why I am in the conversation? Because this is an open forum and the conversation was on playoff formats. Sorry, if my viewpoint doesn't meet your needs here, but that does not mean I was not supposed to not comment. The playoff formats, to me, are going to be directed largely at maximizing revenue and I have no problem with that.  Because in the end, you have to win the games you are given to win it all.  No excuses.

3 hours ago, WildCard said:

I run the test again

The test gets run once and the variables are reset.  This isn't a lab where you can reproduce results.  The variables are constantly changing. 

3 hours ago, pi2000 said:

wrong.gif

The best team doesn't always win.

See below. Also, injecting a meme into this would have cheapened the intellectual nature of the conversation, I am glad it did not work.

3 hours ago, shrader said:

The playoffs are a sprint and the regular season is a marathon.  What it takes to win one is very different than what it takes to win the other.  We tend to focus on the Cup itself for obvious reasons, but personally, winning the President's Trophy is one hell of an accomplishment too.  I have a hard time labeling one as the best vs. the other since the rules are so drastically different, but I can say for sure that I definitely enjoyed the ride that was the regular season in 06-07.

I agree with you.

The best team, as defined by the regular season, is the one who finished with the most points. Even then, people will argue, if it weren't for this or that happening another team might be considered the best. It's all speculation of course, because you define the best as the team that gets the most points (best record, whatever).

How are you then arguing against my statement that the best team in a series or in a game is defined by the team that wins.  It seems that now people who want to argue that are saying if it wasn't for this or that, etc.  An objective measure is not open to interpretation.  Winning is objective. It either happens or it does not. Losing because "I played bad" or "the refs screwed up" or "I forgot my helmet" or any other excuse is one of a myriad of variables that could have influenced the outcome. No one handed the Patriots the Super Bowl trophy because they hadn't lost until the last game.  How many Patriots are walking around bragging about how they were the best team of that year?  I am guessing none of them, because they didn't win the Super Bowl.

 

[WildCard]

1 minute ago, LTS said:

The test gets run once and the variables are reset.  This isn't a lab where you can reproduce results.  The variables are constantly changing.

Right. So basing the conclusion that the best team is the one that wins based off of such a result is a poor decision

[LTS]

1 minute ago, WildCard said:

Right. So basing the conclusion that the best team is the one that wins based off of such a result is a poor decision

So, at best you are left with an inconclusive result.  No best team.

[WildCard]

1 minute ago, LTS said:

So, at best you are left with an inconclusive result.  No best team.

So everyone gets a trophy

I think I just exposed myself as a millennial