TEG, Week of 10:18:07

	Standings	W	L	GF	GA	Home		Away
xy	Todd	8	1	36	18	4	1	4	0
	Kevin	6	3	29	21	3	1	3	2
x	Dan	6	3	24	21	3	2	3	1
x	nait	6	3	29	21	3	2	3	1
	Khris	3	6	22	26	1	3	2	3
	Pat	3	6	12	30	1	4	2	2
	Chief	2	7	18	21	1	3	1	4
	Churchie	2	7	14	26	1	3	1	4

x-Clinched Playoff Spot
y-Clinched tie for First

Week Four Games:
nait @ Kevin
Dan @ Todd
Pat @ Khris
Chief @ Church Knate
Kevin @ Dan
Khris @ Chief
Church Knate @ Pat
nait @ Khris
Todd @ Chief
Dan @ Church Knate
Pat @ Kevin
Todd @ nait

Playoff Picture The playoff picture cleared up substantially by the end of this week even though it remains somewhat of a muddled mess. Todd has all but clinched first place. Kevin has the upper hand on second place at the moment, but cannot overtake first and has not clinched a playoff berth while Dan and nait, sitting behind him in third and fourth respectively, have already clinched playoff berths and nait is the only one who can catch Todd for first place. As for the fifth and final spot everyone else is still eligible to make the playoffs, though Khris has the inside track on that spot.

The scenarios: Todd only needs to win one game or have nait lose one game to clinch his league best third career regular season title. With tie-breakers over both Kevin and Dan, but having lost to nait, Todd can only be caught by him assuming he loses out and nait wins out.

Kevin can technically fail to make the playoffs if he loses out and Pat wins and defeats Kevin by more than three goals.

Dan and nait can both finish anywhere between second and fourth but cannot slip to fifth under any circumstances, both having the tie-breakers over Pat and Khris, the only two below them in the standings that can catch them.

As for the fifth and final spot, the winner of the Khris-Pat matchup this week will have the inside track for the final spot, though both Chief and Knate can make it but would need other teams to lose even if they won out. As far as TEG can remember, this would be the first time that all teams have a stake going into the final week of play.

Meaningful Game Sighted in Churchland After his upset of Kevin, Knate's second win this season not only equaled his career win total heading into the season, it also propelled him into the thick of the playoff chase. In fact, his game against Khris marked the first game Knate had ever played with his own playoff implications at stake. He ultimately lost the game 2-1 in OT, but the fact that he was even in the situation signals a huge step forward for the franchise's history.

Stats of the Week:

1. Todd's eight game winning streak set a new team regular season record, besting his previous best of six straight regular season wins. The streak is now the second longest regular season winning streak behind Colin's twelve straight regular season, but is three behind the 11 straight that Todd won over the course of the end of Season Four's regular season and playoffs.
2. Todd has outshot every opponent in his eight game winning streak. And was outshot in his only loss.
3. Todd is 7-0 as the Blue Team.
4. Kevin has now gone 87 straight games without being shutout.
5. nait and Kevin both insured that they would finish no worse than .500 for the sixth consecutive season, the only two teams to hold such a streak in league history.
6. nait clinched his six straight playoff appearance, the only team in league history to make the playoffs in every season.
7. Dan tied a career best five game winning streak and besting his best in-season winning streak.
8. Chief is tied for last place despite having the league's best save percentage.
9. Original Four teams went 7-1 this week against expansion teams, bringing their record to 18-2 on the season in such games.
10. Knate has both victories by an expansion team over an Original Four.
11. After tying the single season shutout total in Week 2, no team was shutout this week.
12. Only one team has had 20 SOG this season--and lost.
13. Teams that held a two goal lead went 5-1.

One Goal Made All the Difference In the last game of the first week, Chief, sitting at 2-0 and looking to end the week as the only undefeated team left in the league, was leading Pat 2-0 late in the game. But Pat, hanging in there, scored a late goal with time left on the clock. This allowed the puck to be put back into play and Pat again took advantage by scoring the tying goal and ultimately the game-winning overtime goal to overcome a two goal deficit. Since that game, Chief has not won, going on a seven game slide. In his seven game losing streak he has lost five of his games by one goal and the other two by two.

Even in his rematch against Pat this past week he once again held a late two goal lead that Pat overcame again to continue the losing streak. TEG cannot help but wonder what would have been the outcome of Chief's season had he simply held onto that lead in his third game.

Still, in the new Thursday Night Bubble Hockey, Chief still has a chance to get into the playoffs despite the sudden setback.

TEG, week of 10:11:07

New Dogs versus Old Tricks Now that the financial stability and future of Colin's team is uncertain, it leaves only four of the Original Five still playing. After last week pitted the Original Four against each other, and the three rookies and one-time expansion team Churchie against each other in separate round robins, each of this week's games saw one of the Original Four play one of the expansion teams. And my what a rookie hazing it was! Of the 12 games played, 11 were won by the Original Four and the "expansion" team that won was Churchie: meaning no rookie team beat an Original. This however is by no means a recent trend as the Original Four have a career record of 63-10 against teams that did not play in the league's first season. Todd has the best such record with a 19-1 while Dan holds the "worst" with a putrid 13-5 record. I would go into further depth but then I would run out of stats for the stats of the week section, so see below. By the end of the week the Original Four held the top four spots and where parity once reigned it suddenly seemed feigned and disparity is present again.

Running Items Department: Four Goals and a Victory TEG's irrefutable law still holding strong with teams scoring four goals or more going 9-1 this week. No surprise there except to see that four goals were scored on ten occasions after only seven last week. Perhaps then the following item will prove unnecessary.

Two Goal Leads Are the New Four Goals Equals a Victory As stats are proving, goals are down this season, as are shots. As stated here last week this will ultimately decrease the number of comebacks over multi-goal deficits and add an increased pressure for a team to score the first goal. To support these thoughts, TEG did his best to track the number of times a team that lead by two goals at any point wound up winning their games. By my tally, 10 games featured a two goal lead and eight times the team that held it won. Or put in a less complicated manner: teams only came back from two goal deficits twice. One was by TEG himself who only came back because of how quickly the first two goals were scored against him. (And, almost echoing the words of a bubble hockey playing Tim Connolly TEG, perhaps believing a little too much in his own new theory--almost said to himself "no one comes back from two goals down in bubble hockey.") Todd was the other benefactor of a comeback and he did the same by overcoming an early two goal lead as well. There's no way for TEG to go back and track the number of two-goal leads that have been overcome in the past, but, without trying to sound like the elderly speaking of supposed good old days, TEG is willing to bet that there were a few more such comebacks when the games were longer.

Stats of the Week:

1. Dan's 2-0 win over Chief was only the third 2-0 game in league history. As stated by TEG here last week, there has yet to be a 1-0 game. But with the scoring as it is, it would stand to reason that it's only a matter of time before we see that.
2. nait's holding Pat to one shot on goal marked only the second time in league history that few shots have been register. Much like the 1-0 game, a 0 SOG game seems a matter of time as well. In fact, unconfirmed rumors spoke of one such game, an exhibition, that occurred after league play this past Thursday night.
3. Kevin has never been shutout, a streak that now stands at 84 straight games.
4. There have been seven shutouts already this season, tying the league's season total record.
5. Todd has held opponents to less than 10 SOG for five straight games, breaking the old record of four previously held by Dan (Season Two) and equaled this week by Kevin.
6. Dan was outshot his first four games and has been five of his six games this season.
7. Khris is now 2-0 when outshooting his opponents but 0-4 when being outshot. As TEG's very own real live father used to tell him: "you can't score unless you shoot." TEG's advice to Khris? Shoot!
8. Pat is 1-1 when outshooting his opponents but 0-3 when being outshot. As TEG's very own real live father used to tell him: "you can't score unless you shoot." TEG's advice to Pat? Shoot!
9. After registering a 32-20 edge in shots against his opponents last week and going 2-1 in the process, Chief was outshot 53-14 and wound up going 0-3 in the process.
10. Knate has been outshot in every game this season and counting 11 straight dating back to the last season. In his career he is 1-46 in games he has been outshot. As TEG's very own...SHOOT!
11. Knate ended his record 25 game losing streak with a 2-1 OT, comeback victory against Dan. Two of Knate's three career victories have come against Dan.
12. Chief currently leads the league with a 2.00 GAA and is ahead of the all-time season save percentage record with an .836 percentage and yet is only 2-4. TEG does not know exactly what that could possibly mean except that perhaps the world isn't always fair.
13. Pat has one less GF and two more GA than Knate but has one more win. TEG does not know exactly what that could possibly mean except that perhaps the world isn't always fair.

Bonus Stat Even Though I Know It's Rude to Talk About Him When He's Not Here Colin won his first four career post-season games but has since gone onto lose his next seven (and counting).

Lesser of Two Evils? A new rule change this year, established after Todd broke tradition last year and chose to be the Red Team even though he was the home team--until then it was just given that the home team was Blue--now gives the home team the choice of which side to play on. But so far the home team, aka the team that picks their side is 10-14. Within those choices, Blue is showing to be a better, though only slightly, choice having gone 5-6 when picked, where as Red is 5-8.

Though TEG must ponders what could have changed so drastically from last week to make Re d picked nine times last week and only four times this week.

Next Week: More shots on goal stats! And maybe something more about the Blue/Red battle for good and evil.

TEG 10.4.07

Standings..W..L..GF....GA..Home..Away
Todd............2...1....13......8....0-1...2-0
Kevin...........2...1....11.......9....1-1....1-0
Chief............2...1......9......4....1-0....1-1
Chris............2...1......7......3....0-1....2-0
Pat...............2...1......5......7....1-1.....1-0
nait..............1 ..2......6......7....0-1.....1-1
Dan..............1...2......6....12....1-1.....0-1
Churchie.....0...3......2......9...0-2.....0-1

Week 2 Games

Chris @ nait
Chief @ Todd
Churchie @ Dan
Kevin @ Chris
Chief @ Dan
Churchie @ Kevin
Chris @ Todd
nait @ Chief
Todd @ Churchie
Dan @ Pat
Kevin @ Pat
Pat @ nait



Eighteen Month Sentence Served On a night when Chris Drury and Daniel Briere scored winning goals for each of their new respective teams, Buffalo fans might have needed a little something to distract them. And nearly eighteen months after the last game played, Bubble Hockey finally returned! And for all the traveling I had done in between, Thursdays just never felt the same. Not even this summer's Thursday in the Square felt right. Thursday had just lost its charm. On a rare good Thursday in the past year I remember once texting Church Nate "I forgot how much fun Thursdays could be." How I forgot just how much fun it was to know that on one given night you'd be amongst the best of your friends competing and hanging out I don't know. But I remember it now. I missed this and it's good to be back.

Last 1990's NHL Finds Bubble Hockey Home It was almost noticed immediately. Something didn't feel quite right about the length of the first game. And then the final stats started rolling in and it seemed all too obvious. The games may be cheaper now, but the games are also shorter as well. This will not only effect the likelihood of all-time records of being broken, but it more than likely also effect the number of high-scoring games, high shot totals and, perhaps most disappointing, multi-goal comebacks that we see. Also, more boring records such as the least SOG in a game (1) are suddenly more likely to be broken. There has never been a 1-0 game in league history (there have been 2 2-0) but, with this mid-1990's like dip in scoring, it may just be a matter of time before we see that.

Running Items Department, Four Goal Minimum: Another stat that immediately jumped out as being down was TEG's favorite rule that a team that scores four goals has an 80% chance of winning. The actual numbers for teams scoring four or more goals is 201-37: a .845% winning percentage. Teams that score exactly three times, just one goal less, fall to a mere .336 winning percentage, having gone only 37-73. The winning percentage for teams scoring even less than three continue the trend downward.

But this week, 4 goals were only scored seven times (out of thirty six) and there was only a single instance when both teams scored 4 or more, that being done in the second game, a 5-4 win for Kevin over Dan.

These stats do remain consistent with TEG's rule as teams went 83.3% of the time they scored four goals or more. But where it doesn't remain consistent is that out of those 246 previous games, 201 had at least one team score four goals or more. This week only saw 7 of 36, a 19.4% that is far less than the previously established 81.7% of the time.

Still, that isn't to say that there weren't any interesting stats this week.

Stats of the Week:
1. Kevin still never been shutout in league play, a streak that is now sitting at 81 straight games.
2. Todd became only the second team to shutout Dan. Dan was only shutout twice previously, both times by Colin.
3. Still on the topics of shutouts, there had been 22 previous shutouts in league play. In his first three career games, Chris had two.
4. nait was held, by Kevin, to a career low of four shots on goal in a game. nait's previous worst was 8, though Kevin has held teams to three shots three times in his career.
5. Chief fell one win short of the longest winning streak by an expansion team to begin their first season.
6. The record for most shots on goal in one game is 34. After three games, only nait (39) and Todd (35) have more than that.
7. This marks the first time there were no teams undefeated after the first week.
8. Teams shooting more than 20 times had previously been 52-13. This week they were 0-1. Only one team had more than 20 SOG!

Slowly Working My Way Back After a long lay off from the TEG column, I'm sure to need a little bit of time before I get back into the thick of things and have more stats and insights. As for a possible new name for TEG readers are encouraged to suggest one, as TEG is uncertain as to when exactly he will be writing this weekly and it is almost certain to not have the Thursday night consistency it previously had.