I don't know the answer. But it seems that the game changes as we move towards the end of regular season. And, the playoffs is a completely different game than we see in the first half of the season. I have wondered about the possibility that a team built with a heavy reliance on regular season analytics might be a bust once the playoffs start.
- spatso
The playoffs are the great lie.
The NHL has said so many times that they are going crackdown on the way they call the rules and a penalty in minute one of game 1 of the regular season will be a penalty in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs - but they've never done it in my lifetime. They have reiterated and reinforced and restated in so many different ways since the lockout in 2005 - which tells me that it's what the fans want, but it clearly isn't what the NHL brass and ownership wants and since their refusal to grant the fans what they're looking for hasn't affected the bottom line at all they have literally no impetus to make that change.
