Dan Bylsma

Friday: Montreal @ Washington Boston @ Buffalo Florida @ Detroit NY Islanders @ Minnesota Colorado @ Vancouver Philadelphia @ San Jose Saturday: Calgary @ Los Angeles Washington @ Toronto Detroit @ Montreal Buffalo @ Ottawa Florida @ NY Rangers Tampa Bay @ Carolina Pittsburgh @ Atlanta NY Islanders @ St Louis Columbus @ Nashville New Jersey @ Dallas Philadelphia @ Phoenix Chicago @ Edmonton San Jose @ Anaheim Sunday: Tampa Bay @ Atlanta Chicago @ Vancouver

Hi everyone,this is my first thread here,I really like your weekly contest here. I missed the first 2 weeks,I like working with numbers so I decided to see how I compared to everyone else so I spent a few hours and figured out everyones percentages and here's the results below. I included everyone that had participated in at least two thirds of the 7 weekly contest games,I thought that would be a fair number ? There's a total of 141 games in the contests so far over the 7 weeks so that calculates to 94 games minimum to make the list. One notable exception I wanted to bring up though was LGW's member "The Edge" would have ranked 2nd overall with a percentage of 62.637 but he fell just 3 games short of participating in 2/3's of the contest games. Others that moved up considerably in the rankings using this method were windsgirl001,betterREDthandead and dropkickshanahans If this website is to be believed (link) 55.4% of the games in the NHL are won by the home team.I went back to the last 200 games played including games from last night and if you would have selected the home team in every game you would have had a percentage of 56.930 ranking you a respectable 26th on the list. I'm not sure I could predict how long it would take for this percentage to emerge over time. Us guys that are down below 54% aren't doing very well I would say :-( I think I'll favor the home team a little more in my future selections.

lol ! here I thought I was just watching to many episodes of the tv show "Breaking Vegas" good job dropkickshanahans !

I think a special thanks should go out to Aussie_Wing for compiling the data every week. Aussie did more then half the work for me.To use baseball terminology his job is to keep count of the "hits"and I just needed to keep track of the "at bats"

one more note,with the stats on home teams winning in the last 200 games as I presented I think a easy recipe for getting to the top of the official contest would be to select every home team plus as in the case of the first month of the season pick just a few of the hot teams when they play on the road such as the Devils,Penguins and Avalanche and that would have probably put you very very close to the top or maybe even having a considerable lead in the contest !? I know hind sight is 20/20 but could it be replicated again ? Well i guess it wouldn't be if everyone did it :-)

thanks for looking guys...I can't get over that stat that if you would have picked the home team in every game of the last 200 it would have put you in the upper half of the standings list ! Maybe that was a little bit of fluke and if you did it for the next 200 games you could end up with something like 53% correct,who knows ? I'll keep track of it :-)

Friday: Minnesota @ Washington NY Islanders @ Carolina Anaheim @ Columbus Calgary @ Buffalo Los Angeles @ Atlanta Toronto @ Chicago Saturday: NY Rangers @ Ottawa Calgary @ Toronto Washington @ New Jersey Buffalo @ Philadelphia NY Islanders @ Florida Anaheim @ Detroit Boston @ Pittsburgh Los Angeles @ Tampa Bay San Jose @ St Louis Montreal @ Nashville Dallas @ Phoenix Vancouver @ Colorado Sunday: Minnesota @ Carolina Edmonton @ Atlanta San Jose @ Chicago

congratulations to FinRedWing and the rest near the top ! wow dead last for me this week lol last week I came one game from first ! feast or Famine oh well it is loads of fun to participate.

Friday: NY Islanders @ New Jersey Toronto @ Carolina Philadelphia @ Buffalo Washington @ Florida Vancouver @ Dallas Chicago @ Colorado Saturday: Nashville @ Los Angeles Buffalo @ Boston Detroit @ Toronto Tampa Bay @ Montreal New Jersey@ Ottawa Atlanta @ NY Islanders St Louis @ Philadelphia Florida @ Washington Carolina @ Columbus Dallas @ Minnesota NY Rangers @Calgary Phoenix @ Anaheim Pittsburgh @ San Jose Sunday: St Louis @ Atlanta Edmonton @ Colorado

ok thanks Echolalia,your reply was very insightful, rational and even enlightening.This is why I come to this forum to get ideas from the bad guys about our good guys ;-)

ok,fair enough,you said in an earlier post in this thread "Most of us aren't (and haven't been) taking issue with Crosby himself, at least when it comes to skill." May I ask what issues you have with him ? Keep in mind the young age when he broke into the league and where's he at now in his career. Do you think he's that same person he was when he was a rookie and how long should you hold on to that strong dislike as his career progresses and he matures more ?

I haven't seen the play. I'll concede the point to you,it's not important.If someone else made a similar play then yes he should get just as much credit.But once again all of this is not Crosby's fault.

sounds to me like your issues are 100% with the NHL and 0% with Crosby.Every time I see an interview with Crosby he's always the same,mild mannered,down to earth and intelligent,not wondering why he's not getting more attention.

but still another irrational reason people hate Crosby

Sid hate? More like Sid overdose.... and that's totally not his fault,you agree ?

you misinterpreted what I said,never meant to imply you hated Carman,I was talking about Crosby

you guys need some professional help ! This is so representative of the Crosby hate or maybe in this case just dislike of Crosby. Crosby makes a save,going about his business as usual and through no fault of his own nhl.com makes a big deal about it BUT the anger gets directed back at Crosby ?! This is what is getting old,Carman is just injecting some common sense here and there! This irrational hatred you have is not endearing yourselves with as many other LGW's members here as I bet you might think........

yeah I agree with you Doc,some of these guys think when Crosby fights he needs to first attend an anger management class to make sure he's fighting for the right reason and not just a spur of the moment thing ?!

ok so if he fights he's a wuss and if he doesn't he's a wuss and if he makes contact with the guy during the fight it's completely uncalled for... lol

congratulations to all the winners this week and the ones in 4th place overall for hanging in there and weathering the storm and ascending into first place ! Edit: Correction,ascending into 2nd place Looks like akustyk is in first place by himself !

God love ya Carman ! Remember these kinds of threads brings out the irrational folks as one respectable member here informed me not to long ago. I believe they are in the minority here (the irrational ones) If Ovechkin had beat them in the SCF's they would hate him almost as much.BTW I hope that Ovechkin and May are not badly hurt and will be back playing very soon.

lighten up,if your taking my post like that then your taking it too seriously.

Doc,I can see your going to be a tough nut to crack and bring over into the light. The rest of you,when you come over,just think there will be fewer late games to have to stay up and watch.More sleep time. Lets suppsose the Pens would have gotten off to a really bad start. You guys would feel even worse wondering why you couldn't beat them in the finals ?!?

I don't know what's up with Carolina so far this year. I have no faith in picking them in the contests. Speaking of contests,your taking one on the chin so far this weekend ! I'm not saying the wings will never be my western C. team,you know how that Stockholm syndrome works,you hang around the bad guys long enough and you begin to sympathize with them lol Thanks for bringing up Malkiin,your a good person.Some of the comments in the thread about him here the other day weren't very nice,but even here I think they are in the minority.Most people here love hockey so much they want to see the best players out there on the ice.