Although when it comes to sports I live and breathe football. As a canadian I can’t help but appreciate hockey. Every since I was a kid and it drove me crazy when my Calgarian friends would cheer for the Gretzky led oilers I have been a Flames man. This season the Flames have, thus far, the third best record in the league at 7-2-1 as well as the highest scoring offence in the league. Prognosticators seem to believe that this might be the year. I should be overjoyed right??
Not so much… There are some concerning factors regarding the Flames run that I would like to point out.
- The flames have the 6th most goals per game scored against them this year.
- The flames have the 3rd least goals per game and only score as much as they do by having the highest scoring percent in the league. This may not be a sustainable situation.
- Despite Kiprusoff playing better than previously he still has a middling save percentage.
I’m not too sure how people keep claiming this is the best defence in hockey. My question comes back to my recent football post. How bad can this team be and have accumulated this record? Let’s say we believe the current record to be within 2 standard deviations of how many points this team should actually have. They currently accumulate points at a rate of 0.75 * possible points or rather have won 7.5/10 games. Lets just say they’ve won 8 games for argument’s sake. Were they a 0.45 team, or rather 22nd in the NHL then winning 8/10 still falls within a 97.5% confidence interval. What this means is that at this point all we can say with “confidence” based on the results so far is that the flames are in the top 2/3 of the league. Hopefully they make me proud and play the rest of the year like the 0.75 team they’ve been, but I’m feeling nervous!