Uh-Oh
Mirtle has an interesting post up about the remarkable resurgence of the Central division and the nearly as remarkable collapse of the Northwest.
I suppose there could be a hockey explanation for it, but I don’t like the looks of the moves given the schedule change this year. Everybody’s travel got more difficult this year, but the relative change helps the Central the most and hurts the Northwest the most. In fact, if you flipped the Pacific and the Southeast Division results, you would have the Divisions ranked from the most travel advantaged to the most travel disadvantaged.
A coincidence? I don’t like coincidences.
That was a the puck squirts through the goalie’s legs and you’re all alone at the edge of the crease tap-in. Even I figured that one out. And I’m still hawking my the West can’t be so much better than the East to overcome the travel disadvantage and post such better records theory aka travel aint all that.
The tide comes in, the tide goes out. These things go in waves, Tom, and there doesn’t have to be a tidy explanation for everything. The Blackhawks, Blue Jackets, and now the Blues have all had nice breakout seasons. The flipside of that is that those wins have to come against someone else, because this is ultimately a zero sum game. Therefore, another previously strong division gets knocked down a peg. It’s just the circle of life in sports…
Sure, without a doubt. But I think the point is, is the Central 12 points ahead of the Northwest, per team? Or is travel skewing the results? Add in that half the Central teams don’t spend anywhere near the cap – I hope we can all agree that there is some correlation between payroll and success – whereas only one NW team can boast as such, and the results get even harder to believe. I think the Central’s a good division, to be sure. But THAT good? The other 10 teams in their conference have brutal travel schedules. No other division can say that.
I am beating the drum for the travel argument in my blog here and have run into the usual opposition. I dug out some of your old about.com articles as references and I am wondering if you have any more data you can share (even if its old) to help make the case.
In an unrelated question is the “Earl” you mention in the old posts a real figure or a fictional figure created to argue against your positions?
So if travel is such a huge issue, why was the Central Division so stinky before?
As for teams not spending to the cap, the issue is being able to have rookies and young players outperforming their entry level deals. If you have some of those, you are cooking. If you don’t, and had to pay full freight for all the talent on your roster, you are in trouble. The emerging teams in the Central all have some emerging talent playing on relatively cheap contracts. That won’t last forever, of course, but for now it allows them to compete with a relatively low payroll.
So if travel is such a huge issue, why was the Central Division so stinky before?
This is the first post-lockout season in which the league went back to a balanced schedule. 1) Travel got worse for everyone out West, but it got a lot more worse for the Pacific and Northwest than for the Central. This is the first season under the current CBA in which travel has become this much of an advantage over the other divisions in the conference. 2) Also, STL, CHI, and CBJ are also much improved this year. Put another way, this is the first season of the current CBA in which most of the teams in the Central werent’ god awful. I think it’s a some combination of these two factors that’s driving the significant disparity in divisional results.
As for teams not spending to the cap, the issue is being able to have rookies and young players outperforming their entry level deals.
Of course, though more broadly the issue is having any player whether it’s a non entry-level young player cf. Duncan Keith or an older UFA signing cf. Jan Heda that is outperforming their cap hit. Generally though, higher payroll means a better team.
Earl was real in the sense that he was a composite based on several friends.
I’ve long lost the data. I did dozens of different studies that tried to isolate the travel issue. They all to one degree or another showed a persistent skewing in the Western conference. Eventually I gave up trying to prove an idea that people really weren’t prepared to consider.
Earl was real in the sense that he was a composite based on several friends.
Whoa, didn’t realize I was infringing on an already-used idea. Royalty check is in the mail.