Kung Fury is Born

The Rhinestein Cowboys have evolved into Kung Fury.

2012/13 Official Definitely Offside Draft Lottery

See who wins the Definitely Offside Draft Lottery for the 2012/13 season. Implications below the break.

REMS took last in 2011/12, so received 40% chance of winning,

ESR! took 11th in 2011/12, so received 30% chance of winning,

Edmonton Mercury's finished 10th, receiving a 20% chance,

and Mama Ramotswe finished 9th, gaining a 10% chance of winning this lottery.

(Very Official) Definitely Offside Expansion Draft Results

The Very Official Definitely Offside Expansion Draft Lottery was held this morning in a secret room off Main st.

The result?

Peri is selecting 1st in the 2012/13 Expansion Draft.

Definitely Offside Podcast Ep.15:"There's No Crying in Baseball!"

Episode 15 - better late than never! Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Delayed by some kind of disruption in the time-space continuum, namely: busy schedules, Gersy and Smitty finally return to the ice for some saucy, scintillating talky-talk talk. Outbursts of raw, unwanted emotion, Sam Gagner (seen below in this week's episode of "The Walking Dead" a.k.a. "The Oilers"), trade rumours and some recent retirees all get their due in this episode's free-flowing tete-a-tete. Also - numerous factual errors! We're hoping Kommissioner Kev will write an addendum to the conversation that can fill in all the gaps in Mike's and Ross' memories. What are ya gonna do when there's no Wi-fi? Backwards tattoos, Sammy Jankis, backwards tattoos.

Best Fantasy Players in January

So I'm a little late getting on this for January, but with the all-star break, these totals are roughly 1 month's worth despite including a few games in February. Most players have played a typical 13-14 games for this reporting period.

Top 12 Fantasy Point Totals:

John Tavares (33.4)

Ilya Kovalchuk (31.7)

Dan Boyle (28.4)

Evgeni Malkin (28.3)

Martin St Louis (25.2)

Martin Erat (25.2)

Erik Karlsson (25.1)

Matt Moulson (24.9)

James Neal (24.9)

Mike Fisher (24.3)

Vincent Lecavalier (24)

PA Parenteau (23.2)

50th Best player: Alex Goligoski (17.1)

I've added the 50th best guy so that we can see the distance between 12 and 50. It's not much this month. Anyone else getting tired of seeing Malkin and Karlsson on these lists? Me neither. Note that Ross has two players this month for the first time - January All-Star Tavares and everyone's favourite guy to forget, Martin Erat. Jason S. also has two guys, but he left one on the bench all month. Finally, did anyone else see St Louis up there for January and December and feel a little bad for Jason B. (who traded him on November 26th)?

Top 12 Fantasy Point Averages:

Ilya Kovalchuk (2.6)

John Tavares (2.5)

Ryan Whitney (2.4) ** Only 4 games played

Dan Boyle (2.2)

Martin St Louis (2.1)

Alex Pietrangelo (2.0)

Evgeni Malkin (2.0)

Vincent Lecavalier (2.0)

Martin Erat (1.9)

Erik Karlsson (1.9)

Patrick Elias (1.9)

Justin Williams (1.9)

(Also at 1.9: Mike Fisher and Jake Gardiner, though Gardiner only played in 8 games.)

Only 8 players at or over 2.0 this month compared to 11 in December and 14 in November. You'll see that reflected in the goalie stats. 

Top 5 Goalies

Cam Ward (42.7 / 3.6)

Pekka Rinne (39.8 / 3.6)

Jaroslav Halak (31.5 / 3.9) ** Only played 8 games

Henrik Lundqist (31.8 / 3.5)

Miikka Kiprusoff (28.1 / 2.8)

Craig Anderson put up 30.4 points, but only a 2.2 average.

This is a MASSIVE increase over last month's stats, showing both that teams are starting to rely on their starters a little more (they are playing more games) and that scoring was down. Last month the top goalie had an average of 3.0. Lundqvist makes his 3 appearance in a row on this list, and Halak appears after Elliot was on here in November. Ward and Kipper are new. In fact, they are out of no where. And where are Niemi and Quick?! Both had 2 shutout weeks this month and neither make the list. 

Malkin is still on these lists, keeping his streak alive at 4 straight months. Also, last month the list was filled with Canucks (Sedins, Kesler, Bieksa, Luongo). This month there are none. In their place are a couple guys from each of the Islanders, Predators, and Lightning. I guess that makes this month the Month of the Losers.

Definitely Offside Podcast Ep.14:"Moses Had 10 Keepers"

Hang on tight, kids, or else you're getting sucked up into the nerd tornado faster than you can say, "Sonic Screwdriver"! New guest Matt "Belly" Beall joins us for the first time as we get into X-Men, Avengers, Transformers, Fenslerfilm/GI Joe, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Twitter, war hero tribute beer, Kev's mouth trumpet, Henry Rollins and the relative value of Glen Danzig. We even fit in some hockey talk! Madness. You're just some cheap innuendo away from the best hour of your life. Lace up and hit the ice, it's Definitely Offside, Episode 14!

source: http://hudsonhongo.com/danzig/

Das Kapital

I thought I would take a look at my assertion that current success in the league is partially due to the dividends reaped from the original draft. I went through the top 100 current players (based on point total to-date in the current season) and tried to reconstruct their history in the league. 2012 Top 100 is the team breakdown of current players, 2011 K is the number of end-of-last-season keepers in the current top-100, 2010 K is the number of end of 2009-2010 keepers (post AD-draft I believe) in the current top-100, and finally the original draft in the top-100.

Team    2012 Top 100    2011 K    2010 K     OD
AMA         12              7       5         3
BATS        10              6       5         4
BAY          9              4       3         5
CATS         7              7       3         4
EM           4              2       2         4
ESR          6              4       4         6
MORI        10              6       5         4
njr          9              6       4         6
REMS         6              2       2         0
TODD         9              4       2         2
UNGE        11              5       2         0
           100             55      40        40

55 of the top 100 players (in the current season) were keepers at the beginning of the season. Career years, injuries, just-general-suckitude, etc. all contribute to the difference. However, almost 75% of those 55 performing keepers were originally drafted at the beginning of the league, and those players are the majority of the most valuable players in the league.

What then of this supposed "capital" handed down from the original draft and subsequent re-distribution? Many players have been traded around, but we can look at it in aggregate by comparing the 2010 K value to the 2012 Top 100 value, which says on a team-by-team basis how many of those original "great" keepers are contributing to their team in the present. My apologies to Shawn for referrring to the auto-draft teams, but somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of the current top-100 players on the non-autodraft teams are players originally drafted in the borked starting draft, or their transaction-descendants. If you assume that having good players means you can trade for good players, even with the re-distribution draft, the AD teams have ceded about a 20% advantage*.

Please consider Unger's heroic performance this season. If you estimate a 50% success rate for keepers (55/100 last year to current season), that 20% advantage is worth about 10% in real player performance, and that boost in PF would like have bumped him into competition for 3rd.

My guess from this analysis is that it will take 5 to 6 seasons^ to work this out. It is very clearly working itself out through attrition, developing players, and trading.
 
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* Average inheritance rate of ~45% for the non-AD, and ~25% for the AD.
^ The numbers fit a decrease of about 25% per year for this effect.