Craig Powers wrote:
|
| I have an interesting idea that I also posted to the USCHO message
| board:  Have the travel partners that Dartmouth will be playing play a
| non-conference game against each other on the open night each weekend.
|
| This will:
| a) Make up the missing total games in the teams' schedules
| b) Remove the advantage the teams have of playing only one game in the
|    weekend when Dartmouth has to play two
| c) Make up some (but probably not much) or the lost revenue.
 
On first glance, this seems plausible, but is very difficult to implement
after you really think about it.
 
The "open night" for each of the two travel partners will be different,
since, for example, one team would play Dartmouth on Friday and Vermont on
Saturday while the other would play Vermont on Friday and Dartmouth on
Saturday.  Shifting the schedule to three days might make it possible, if
for example, Dartmouth plays Team A on Friday and Team B on Saturday, while
teams A and B then play each other on Sunday.  The AvsB game would probably
have to be at the home rink of either A or B, and determining which team
gets it would be a serious problem.
 
In any event, the schedule will be very unbalanced by replacing the Vermont
games with games against travel partners.  I think that the schedule is
already unbalanced enough with the games already played against Vermont
counting in the ECAC standings.
 
-=-=-=-=-=-
 
To comment on the article by Jayson Moy on USCHO:  He brought up the point
that by counting the games that had already been played by Vermont and using
winning percentages in standings and per-games-statistics for
goals/assists/pts/etc. would create a very unbalanced and unfair system that
would favor the teams that had one less game remaining than the other teams.
 
I have to agree with him on the unfairness of using percentages for league
standings, especially considering that the ECAC schedule was (if my poor
memory serves right) a very balanced schedule.  Taking out the games against
Vermont might have been a better solution for league standings.
 
Politically, I could see those teams that had already faced and beaten
Vermont as being very strongly opposed to such a solution, though. :)  I'm
guessing that the solution that was arrived at was one that was needed to
obtain consensus among the various schools involved.
 
I don't, however, have any problem with league awards that are based on
statistics using a per-game calculation.  After all, we've pretty much been
using such calculations for years when doing comparisons among players
across all of the various conferences.  When players from two different
teams play an uneven number of games, there really isn't much choice in the
matter... using a per-game evaluation is the best way to compare the
performance of the two and how much they helped their team.  After all, if
you took raw totals, then those players who played an extra game would have
a very unfair advantage of one more game in which to gather points.
 
BTW, To dull the argument of "what about players who miss a game or two with
injuries?", I would still prefer to do the calculations based on the games
played by the team.  I believe that for league awards you want to assess how
much they helped their team during league play, not how well they performed
when they did play.
 
Adam Bryant
BU '89 NU '96
 
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