Quote:
Originally Posted by Bandwagon In Flames
We dominated Anaheim 8-3. A team who routinely makes us look like an AHL team.
We beat Minnesota 2 times and they are a hard team to squeeze points from. They have the highest goal differential in the Western Conference.
We are 1-1 against St. Louis and if not for Elliott we would of won both of them.
We are 1-0 against San Jose.
We are 1-2 against Chicago but we deserved to win the last game.
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Inspired by your comments above, I wanted to investigate how consistently we out perform our opposition versus how they have played in their first roughly 32 games.
For our baseline, I assumed a points percentage of 1.1437%. I tried a number of higher and lower numbers, but this one works for a number of reasons:
1. We have achieved a roughly .500 points percentage against our oppositions through the first 33 games. Their combined average points percentage is 1.1437.
2. Going any higher than 1.1437 and Flames underachieve too often.
3. Going any lower than 1.1437 and the Flames overachieve too often.
4. There is a pretty good over-achieving/under-achieving distribution throughout the whole season with this average.
We can argue about this percentage, but minor adjustments to this percentage (1.17 instead of 1.14 only causes 2 games to swing), so it does not make a huge difference.
How to Interpret: (numbers are abitrary to identify discreet events)
2= Flames should have lost and won
1 = Flames won when they should have won
0 = Flames lost when they should have lost
-0.5 = Flames lost in OT when they should have won
-1 = Flames lost when they should have won
FINDINGS:
Assuming the Flames are a 1.14 team (93 point team)
1. The Flames have under-achieved 7 times with no points to show and 2 times with at least one point to show for it.
2. The Flames have over-achieved 7 times.
3. The Flames have played as expected for 17 games.
4. In the last little run of 15 games, the Flames have over achieved 3 times and underachieved 3 times. Therefore, despite what has been otherwise an impressive streak, the schedule has clearly been favourable to support this run.
Finish on a positive:
Since I have been a bit of a Negative Nancy on here lately, something positive to think about. If the Flames are in fact a 1.14 team and they continue to over-achieve as much as they under-achieve against the opposition they will win another 64 points (as the schedule gets easier). This would result in a total of
98 points on the season.
**All of the above assumes that the 30 game mark is fairly reflective of how teams will play for the rest of the season and for every team that gets better, there are teams that get worse.