I know most hockey fans enjoy this, but I’d rather see these guys use that pent up anger and energy and make a play that actually impacts the game. A situation where two guys grab the other by the jersey and throw 50 right hooks doesn’t seem like it should take place in a professional sport, save for boxing or MMA.

If you, like me, live in fear of the fall of 2011 having no NFL football, but don’t understand all of the legal mumbo-jumbo associated with the labor dispute, I’m hear to put things in terms we all can understand.

First things first, and that is that the owners unanimously opted out of the current CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) in 2008, one that they had signed off on in 2006. Since I’m making this as easy as possible to understand, let me tell you that a CBA is the agreement two sides, usually labor and management, come to on various topics, most of which include how money will be divided. And in this case, the owners realized that player salaries were escalating out of control and that their profits were being squeezed more each year. Yes, part of the problem is they are agreeing to these salaries, and player agents are a huge part of that. In the bigger picture, the real problem is revenue sharing, a.k.a. how to split the financial pie. And while the NFL is bringing in a ridiculous amount of money ($7.6 billion in 2008), about 62% of that goes to player salaries, a number that keeps climbing due to increases in the overall salary cap. To make matters worse, there is also revenue sharing among teams, meaning the big market teams have to help the small market teams to help them compete with each other on the field.

So the owners want something like 18% of the pie back, in the form of salary cuts to the players. Naturally, the players do not want to give them this money back, and that is why head of the players’ union DeMaurice Smith announced during the Super Bowl’s hype week that the chance of a lockout were a 14 on a scale of 1 to 10. For his part, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell denounced that, saying he hoped it wouldn’t come to a work stoppage, but he also knows that it’s a very real possibility. The players aren’t necessarily saying they won’t give part of the pie back, either. Smith wants the owners to show the players that they are struggling to run their businesses, meaning he wants them to open up their books. And the owners won’t do it. So are the numbers being reported not what they say? It’s hard to say the owners aren’t lying about these numbers, when they keep agreeing to player contracts and they keep building huge state-of-the-art stadiums, but they also have the right to not open their books if they don’t want to. And the bottom line is that the owners are not happy about doling out more and more of their profits.

Then, of course, there is the issue of an uncapped 2010 season. The current structure calls for a salary cap through the 2009 season, with 2010 being an uncapped year if the owners opt out of the CBA, which they did. Last time this happened, in 1993, player salaries rose to 69% of NFL revenue, and that is expected to happen again. But of course, nothing is guaranteed in 2011, so the players have to be careful of what they wish for.

If organized sports have taught us anything, it’s that the possibility of no games being played can and will happen. You might remember the NFL had a similar situation in 1987, and the owners used replacement players for a few games before the dispute was resolved and the regular players went back to work. MLB cancelled the last two months of the 1994 season as well as the playoffs and World Series, a black mark they have not recovered from. The NBA had a similar situation in 1998-99, with almost half a season being wiped out. And of course, the freshest in our memories is the NHL’s 2004-05 season that was not played due to a labor dispute.

So as fans, we have to hope a few things happen between now and the summer of 2011, which is spewing a black cloud that keeps getting darker and more imposing by the day. We have to hope the owners agree to open up their books, and we have to hope the players agree to give back part of the pie for the health and financial well being of the NFL. Sure, we want the players we love to watch get the money they deserve, but within reason. Certainly it’s not worth much to anyone to have no NFL games being played, but it may very well come to that.

Of course, the NFL is not the only business that would be affected by a lockout. Besides the local businesses near stadiums that thrive during the season, fantasy football and all of the money (reported as upwards of $3 billion in 2007) associated with that is threatened here. Think about that for a second. The folks that make their livelihood in that world will be flattened financially. Well, maybe that’s going to be the subject of my next piece on this, but for the moment I wanted to do my part to help everyone understand the dispute between owners and players, and what it all really means.

Many think that a lockout won’t really happen, and I’m optimistic myself that it won’t. But history surely does make us all nervous, doesn’t it?

We’ve partnered with the fine folks over at On Goal Analysis to provide quality NHL content throughout the season. Here’s an excerpt from a post by Michael Pryor.

It’s my turn in line and I would like to think I have been pretty good this year. So I thought I’d ask for three things this Christmas to help grow my favorite sport.

First, please restructure the NHL schedule. This is a specific request, so here’s what I mean:

1. Go to 84 regular-season games.

2. Each year, give us an inter-Conference home-and-home set so we can see every team in our building at least once. (That’s 30 games.)

3. Give us three games each of inter-Divisional play in our conference scheduled any way you want to make the season’s scheduling problems easier. (Our total is now 60 games.)

4. And give us six, intra-Divisional games in three-games-in-one-week sets. Do one set in the NOV/DEC timeframe to give us weekly rivalries (like a Red Wings’ “Blackhawk Week,” or an Islanders’ “Rangers Week”) in the Thanksgiving/Christmas period to build NHL excitement going into the Winter Classic(s). Then end the season with the other set of rivalry weeks so everyone feels like they have played some playoff series regardless of whether or not they get to compete for the Stanley Cup. (And that makes 84 games.)

This present gives us all of the stars in our building every year and two stretches in the regular season feeling like playoffs. (We will love our Hockey even more and come to games even more often!)

Read the rest of the post over at the OGA blog.

Photo from fOTOGLIF

We’ve partnered with the fine folks at On Goal Analysis to provide our readers with some good NHL content this season. Here’s the intro to a recent post by Michael Pryor:

What is the measure of a hockey skater’s contribution to his team? Plenty of statistics define goaltenders and their contributions. But what about the players who skate in front of them? While highly knowledgeable Hockey fans will say such enlightened comments as ‘it depends on their position and how they play it,’ many others will tell you it’s how many points they rack up.

At On Goal Analysis, we have a tradition of looking at things with a different twist. While we like to key on points, sometimes they are misleading because theoretically speaking the leading point scorer in the NHL still might play on a team that does not even make the Playoffs. And yet, maybe points themselves just need a slightly different emphasis to make their true significance understood.

That’s why we are recommending for your consideration Points Per Shift – PPS – as a new statistic to use when analyzing who is the most productive player on the ice. PPS analyzes how many Points Per Game (PPG) each player provides divided by the average number of shifts he takes in order to tell you what he brings to the Great Game each and every time he goes over the boards. It also makes Shifts Per Game (SPG) more relevant to the average fan of the game.

Read the rest after the jump…

Photo from fOTOGLIF

We’ve partnered with On Goal Analysis to provide in-depth NHL coverage this season. For more analysis, be sure to check out the On Goal Analysis website and the OGA Blog.

Submitted by Michael Pryor

There are two things to report on for The Scores Report submission this week. First is a quick analysis of players skating in all games for a team versus their standings points – is there a connection? And the other is the latest results for On Goal Analysis’ Playoff Qualifying Curve.

Players In All Games Versus Standings Points

If I was back in a college science class, I would properly begin a study with a hypothesis. So I offer here that I believe the more players who skate for every scheduled game, the better the overall team performance. Said another way, injuries are likely to adversely affect a team’s ability to earn the “W.”

There is no doubt the loss of an Ovechkin, Gaborik, or Kopitar with what they are providing their teams right now should produce a drop off in overall team production and ability to win games. True, teams often rise to the occasion, playing above their heads and sucking it up for their fallen comrade. The New Jersey Devils losing Martin Brodeur for most of last season is a good example. But more often than not, you are likely to see the kind of play Vancouver offered with the loss of Roberto Luongo last winter.

They used to say in that science class ‘…It is just as important to disprove a theory as it is to show you were right….’ So without further ado here are the mixed results of the comparison through games ending Sunday night, 25 October:

A few notes before the analysis:

• Team names are color-coded red for Eastern Conference and blue for Western Conference.

• The column marked “100% Pl” indicates how many players on a team have dressed for every game. While some players get benched to teach a lesson, a larger percentage have lost games for injury. When looking at these numbers remember NHL rosters have 21 skaters and two goalies at any one time.

• “Points” are points earned in the standings for Wins and OT/SOL’s as of Sunday, 25 October.

• And “Avg Pts” is the average points for all teams with the same amount of 100% Pl’s.

Analysis says my original hypothesis is just about correct. The group of teams with the highest Average Points is FLA, NYR and PIT who have all had 16 players skate in 100% of their scheduled games. (Granted, NYR and PIT raise FLA’s average with their performance.) The 17 teams who have had between 12 and 14 skaters in every game this season average as a whole 11.2 points in the standings and are the most consistent grouping of clubs. The 15 and 11 each 100% Players represent the bookends to this middling group and average between 10 and 11 standings points. And NSH, the team with less than half of the skating roster who has been present on the ice from the start averages the least points at seven.

You can call this a thin correlation this early in the season. I would offer that it begs for more scrutiny as last season, for example, SJS as the President’s trophy Winner finished the season with five players skating in 80 or more games while the NYI in last place had only two skaters that broke the 70-game mark.

OGA’s Playoff Qualifying Curve (PQC)

On Goal Analysis stakes its place in the NHL’s blogosphere with the underlying premise that we can pick who will or will not be in the Playoffs as accurately and early as possible in the season. While we do not make those pre-season final predictions that many folks throw out there, we do make the calls on the fly based on team play during the season. And we did so last year with 89.7% accuracy and an average of 84 days before mathematical elimination.

We measure teams against our proprietary PQC and make the call every 10 games down that long and bumpy road that is the NHL’s regular season. As this is going to print, 22 of 30 teams have hit the 10-game mark and all will have done so by Halloween. At this point, three teams have been called Chasing Stanley, or IN the 2010 Playoffs, two more at Sharpening Skates which is just short of IN, 11 are In The Curve or right about average, and one is Dusting Off Clubs – just shy of elimination.

On Sunday, 1 November at 5:30pm EST, OGA will discuss the 10-game PQC calls in detail on their weekly JabberHockey show. You are invited to listen in and see what we know so you know who is likely to play on into late April and who is sorely lacking. You can also find out how to know WHEN OGA KNOWS versus simply at each 10-game mark. Join us on Sunday for this and other hot Hockey topics.

Did Anybody Notice…

…That 100 or more goals have been scored in the 2nd Period (350) than in any other so far this season through 27 October?

…That only 18.8% of all goals have been scored by special teams? Or how about the fact that last year special teams combined to account for a very close 18.2% of all goals scored?

…That the Colorado Andersons are kicking butt and taking names for real? We are past that point where they are merely on a streak. So unless the injury or illness bug comes swooping in, OGA is likely to be on target with a call of Chasing Stanley for them.

…That MTL is 5-0 in OTs/SOs and has one regulation win and NYI is 0-5 playing ‘Bonus Hockey’ to go with their lone, regulation victory? Does this mean NYI need only spend another $14.171M against the CAP in order to net those five points MTL did?

…That the Stanley Cup Champions once removed are in 11th place in their conference and last year’s victors 1st in theirs? Does losing four key players to trade and one key forward to injury cost that much in the standings?

We’ll be back next week with more engaging analysis of the NHL. You can catch us during the week at www.ongoalanalysis.com.

We’ve partnered with On Goal Analysis to bring our readers innovative, insightful hockey commentary throughout the season. Enjoy.

Submitted by Mike Pryor

A Note Caused By Atlanta

A 9 October blog by Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal Constitution caught my eye. Within, he indicated Thrashers’ coach John Anderson statement that, while the team had been outshot in its first two games, they are being more ‘…shot selective….’ This selectivity had actually produced 10 goals on 50 shots, or a scoring rate of 20%.

It made me wonder what are all teams’ scoring percentages in terms of goals divided by SOG, and how would that project over 82 games. Based on games ending on Saturday, 10 October, I came up with this:

While the numbers are interesting, there are some anomalies to point out what with it being early in the season and all. First is that the average number of projected goals over 82 games this season (‘Proj Gs’) is about 6.2% higher than last year. That sounds great! Were it not for the eight teams projected with 300+, and five teams with totals in the 100’s, I would think we are going to gleefully be witnessing more red lights. The truth is we are more likely to see those numbers even out amongst the clubs as the season wears on (last year, there were NO teams with 300 goals and only one in the 100’s) and any increase in scoring being more in the 1-2% range if it actually occurs.

Despite this being the early part of the season are a few other noteworthy facts. ATL’s 10 goals / 50 SOGs = 20% scoring percentage calculation is no longer valid after Saturday night. The highest percentage team on that chart is CGY at 15.5% or one goal in every 6 – 7 SOG. ATL is right behind with a 15.39% rate, but is now under that 20% that started me thinking. Still, it kinda sucks to play the Flames and face 35 shots, eh?

On the other side of the coin, however, you have BUF with a paultry 3.45% scoring percentage. Could it be the youngsters they have playing? Sabres’ line combinations? Something is amiss, here.

But when the average number of SOG per team and per game was 30.27 after Saturday night, that means CGY outscores BUF 5 – 1. Shoot – it means EVERYONE outscores BUF. Just not in regulation, right? I love irony. I also know this scoring rate bares watching throughout the season.

The On Goal Analysis (Proprietary) Playoff Qualifying Curve (PQC)

On Goal Analysis came into existence touting its PQC. The PQC is a numerical measurement of the minimum effort a team must exert to qualify for the #8 seed in either the Eastern or Western Conference by season’s end. We measure the PQC nightly, producing our Daily Tip In Report (DTIR), and providing you with the IN- or OUT-of-the-Playoffs call every 10-games for each team. (The DTIR tells you the IN or OUT call the morning after it occurs, however, instead of waiting for each 10-game segment to conclude and the team status blog to post on our site.)

So what can the PQC tell us about the season we have just barely begun?

How about our notes that:

• Eight teams will NOT be eliminated from Playoff contention by Game 10 so far;
• While six teams will NOT clench a Playoff berth by Game 10

‘So what?’ you might ask? There’s 77 or more games still to be played this season. THERE’S PLENTY OF TIME.

Is there? Don’t forget that the margin of error between the 8th and 9th seeds in the two Conferences for all years since The Lockout is a trifling 1.5 games. One Win and an OT/SO loss – that’s all.

And how about the fact that OGA predicted the Rangers, Red Wings and Sharks to be Chasing Stanley – IN the Playoffs – before the end of OCTOBER 2008 and the Islanders at Tee Time – OUT of the post-season – on 1 NOVEMBER of last season? With an overall measurement of accuracy at 89.7% and an average of 84 days before mathematical elimination, we strive to prove that we are watching the NHL closer than the rest.

Who are the 14 teams we mention above? Visit the OGA Store and subscribe to the DTIR so you will know what we know.

How Are They Playing?

We are only two weeks into the season, but there are already some interesting notes about team play at this juncture. Here is what we have found about teams compared to their Game 1 – 5 play since The Lockout:

Best of the EAST
o PIT is sitting with their best start
o One more Win by Game 5 gives the NYI, OTT and TBL their best start

Worst of the East
o This is MTL’s worst start in five seasons
o CAR and WSH are off to their second worst start

Best in the WEST
o CGY and CBJ off to their best start
o With one game to go, LAK and PHX are tied with their best start
o CHI’s start could be their best-at-five with a Win on MONDAY, 12 OCTOBER

Worst in the West
o DET cannot equal its average 5-game start this season
o In one more game MIN and VAN will be at their worst start

And a separate note for Ottawa Senators’ fans. Did you miss Saturday night’s game? More specifically, the response when sophomore Zach Bogosian leveled Sens’ Captain Daniel Alfredsson? The clean but hard, open ice check brought no less than three Senators swarming on Bogosian. Kuddos here for Bogosian, who a few seconds earlier was dumped on his caboose, not being nervous amongst those veterans and going for a statement of his own. But you have to say the same about the Senators who at times over the last few seasons would not necessarily have done that. Could it be those persistently onerous locker room issues flew out west when training camp opened? Time will tell, but it’s not looking bad from our seat down (south) here.

Finally, What Is Going On Out In The Desert?

On Sunday, 11 October, OGA’s JabberHockey show on BlogTalkRadio interviewed Odin Mercer of SB Nation’s “Five For Howling” blog following the Phoenix Coyotes.

A born-and-raised Phoenixian, Odin Mercer brings an interesting perspective to the entire Phoenix situation that is not as well publicized as what the NHL or Mr. Ballsilie said in court on any given day. He speaks about: how “Five For Howling” came to be in the blogosphere; the home opening ‘White Out’ and what constitutes good value for a Coyotes’ ticket; long-term viability of the Coyotes in Phoenix; and how deep the grass roots of Hockey are out west.
Perhaps the most interesting answers begin to flow when the conversation centers on viability of the Coyotes in the Phoenix market. The situation is not necessarily what we have all been led to believe in what we have read around the trial transcripts.

We think the interview is well worth the listen. You can catch in on the JabberHockey archive player at www.ongoalanalysis.com to the left side of page center.

That’s all for now. We will have more throughout the week in the blogosphere and wholeheartedly encourage everyone to spend their free time doing what we all like best: (playing and) watching The Great Game.

Keep those sticks on the ice…