Someone Can Lose An Eye

See, this is why it's bad to have putzes writing for your sports pages.

This gem from The Gazette sports pages:

"If you subtract"

Oh, God. Get your calculators out, Kiddies!

"the team-record 15 points these Canadiens have earned through losses in overtime or the shootout, they would be sitting on 58 points with three games to play, with a record of 29-50."

Timmy - snap, snap - follow me here, k? Officially, the NHL ranks a team's record as follows: Wins, Loss, Overtime. No specifics distinguishing overtime losses from shoot out losses. The local paper took the initiative and did it.

Firsample,

Using the Habs record as our guinea pig.

According to the NHL: 29-35-15 - 73 points.
Sportspaper: 29-35-4-11-73 points.

They both arrive at the same points but there's no clarity. *Shakes head solemnly.*

So. Our dear writer, to make a point, decided to take the 15 OT/SOL and slot them in the loss column. Presto! 29-50! All I can say is, run a business this way and your sunk.

It's misleading and here's why. In theory, the Habs only lost four of the 15 games and tied 11 because theoretically speaking (again), once OT is complete and goes to SO, the game effectively ended in a tie - if we're to apply the old rules as we ought to.

At worst, the record can be expressed like the NHL does it or, more accurately (I think) as 29-39-11 which would put them at 69 points. So they lose four points, which makes sense.

What he should have been focusing on was how bad teams actually benefit from gaining points for winning in shoot out where they'd otherwise have not gotten the extra point in the past. Plus/Minus differential is not enough.

In this way, the Canadiens are just a bad shoot out team and don't actually gain much. In fact, they lose four points. Either way, they still suck and they suck squared for having hired Pierre Gauthier and suck cubed for keeping Gainey in place for so long when it was clear they were in fact both insane. Who knows? Maybe they were busy role playing The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckell and Mr, Hyde.

If anything, I'd like to know how many points they threw away to key opposition teams. Not that it matters because I doubt it would be enough to get them in the playoffs anyway.

Besides, I'm too lazy to check it out. Worse, I don't care. But I can get away with it because I'm just a lowly blogger as we're often told by the "masters." Paid journalists couldn't be bothered to do it so why should you, right?

It's stupid, but hey, it's hockey. A sport that suspends a player (I'm looking at you Duncan Keith), for a violent, blatant elbow to another player subsequently putting him out indefinitely with a concussion for...get this...five games.

Anyway. Moving along.

Worse even than the 2000-01 team, which finished with 70 points.

Etc., etc.. Funny, he took a legitimate gripe and proceeded to make a mess of it. He ended up being right that it's worse than 2001 but even Screetch gets it right from time to time.

We're done here.

Where's that Paul Krooooooogman article again?