Re: Change NCAA's to a Pool Style Tourney
I don't disagree with anything you said, so maybe I wasn't expressing myself clearly enough. My point is that given all that (best players play the best and all that stuff), the results are still LESS PREDICTABLE in hockey simply because of the nature of the game. If you want to use a statistical analogy, if I flip a coin twice the odds are much less that I will get one heads and one tails than if I flip it 100 times. Larger sample size means results more towards the "norm." The sports analogy is that in a basketball game there are over 100 points scored. With that large a sample, the team with the better execution and better scorers is MORE LIKELY to win than in a hockey game, where there are relatively so few goals scored that each goal is magnified. That's all I'm saying - that due to the nature of the game it is less likely that the "better" team will always win in hockey. Luck and lucky/bad bounces are exacerbated in a game like hockey, whereas in basketball there are just a miniscule percentage of all of the things that happen to affect the game overall.
The Bruins won because Vancouver didn't understand that they were playing in the Stanley Cup finals, not a meaningless regular season game in the middle of January. The best players are supposed to play their best at the most important time. Vancouver's didn't, Boston's did. Same thing in the last couple of weeks. I watch Minny quite a bit this season. At times they looked like no one could touch them. But they lost, and to the last team in. North Dakota, the same thing. World beaters against the likes of Bemidji and Minnesota State in January, not so much when it really matters. Maybe this is a western thing where people don't get out much in the real (hockey) world.
I don't disagree with anything you said, so maybe I wasn't expressing myself clearly enough. My point is that given all that (best players play the best and all that stuff), the results are still LESS PREDICTABLE in hockey simply because of the nature of the game. If you want to use a statistical analogy, if I flip a coin twice the odds are much less that I will get one heads and one tails than if I flip it 100 times. Larger sample size means results more towards the "norm." The sports analogy is that in a basketball game there are over 100 points scored. With that large a sample, the team with the better execution and better scorers is MORE LIKELY to win than in a hockey game, where there are relatively so few goals scored that each goal is magnified. That's all I'm saying - that due to the nature of the game it is less likely that the "better" team will always win in hockey. Luck and lucky/bad bounces are exacerbated in a game like hockey, whereas in basketball there are just a miniscule percentage of all of the things that happen to affect the game overall.