Piggybacking on posts by Crabby Appleton and cobracg, and given that the NHL may be reconsidering a few other contracts, I wanted to try to put numbers to why many of these retirement contracts "feel" wrong.  I think Crabby was on to something good regarding how much cap-hit-savings is available for an early retirement.  Taking another approach, I'm going to apply the GINI coefficient, a standard measure of inequality in the social sciences, to compare these contracts.  At best it might suggest a bright line standard the NHL could use (e.g. "anything over .2 is an illegal contract") and at worst you might get exposed to some statistics.

First, a little math background.

Continue reading this post »

This isn't going to be analysis heavy - there simply isn't enough data to prove who's better.  But I'd guess that putting Varly in for every shootout should net us 3-4 points in the standings the rest of the way.  The only real downside I see is the risk of injury, since going in cold is the easiest way to pull a groin, and possibly some effect on JT60's confidence.  The benefits are, well, more points in the standings, and maybe SV40 confidence.  My only question is whether to put Varlamov in at the start of overtime, so as to get him warmer before the shootout, or trust that the 10 minutes before the shooting begins is enough time for him.  I think there's even a case to be made that he'd be better than JT60 in overtime (less risk of screens and deflections, greater likelyhood of odd-man rushes) but that's for another time.

Continue reading this post »

I was going to put this in CapsChick's earlier thread but it was just too long and different.  I fiddled around with some numbers from '08-'09 just to see if there would be something notable in the numbers for the top tier teams.  Basically similar to GINI coefficient (measure of inequality) to see how balanced the scoring is for the top nine teams, with 99 pts or more (calling that the Caps peer group).  This is a bit different than secondary scoring (and my headline is misleading) but may point us in the right direction.

If someone can recommend a good way to post an excel spreadsheet anonymously I'm happy to share, not that there's anything too special in the numbers.

Continue reading this post »