Thursday, January 28, 2010

Now that's puttin' on the foil

First, I'd like to welcome Ken Socrates' hockey blog, Hockey Gone Wild, to the sidebar.  Do go read!

(update - oh, yeah... helps to include the link.  Fixed now.)

Second, I'd like to show off a little.  I've been harping on the pity points in the NHL... it reduces competitiveness at the end of games, doesn't eliminate the "boring" ties (games still are even after 65 minutes), artificially makes teams look better than they are, and makes it harder to catch the teams ahead of you in the standings.

Tiresome?  Well, you'll notice I haven't run the Real Standings for a while.  But check this out from The Hockey News' Edward Fraser.  Essentially, it's a pithier and better-written version of all of my harping over the past few months.

I'd like to take credit, but I've just discovered Mr. Fraser's work, and way back in December 2007, it turns out that he invented the Real Standings, with a twist - he eliminated ties entirely and went to a 2-0 system.  In recognition, the next Real Standings here will be named the Fraser Standings.  (I'm not changing the tag, though.)  And yes, I will actually try to run them sometime over the weekend.  It takes a little while to catch up if I haven't updated it regularly.

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