Hockey Analysis

In my opinion the biggest game of the night is Atlanta at Buffalo. In my mind these have been the two best teams in the east so far this year as Buffalo is 10-0-0 (3 shootout wins) and Atlanta is 7-1-3 (2 shootout losses, 1 win). Both teams feature top tier young NHL goalies and underrated somewhat nameless (unknown) defenses. Both teams can score goals too with Atlanta having more top end talent with Kovalchuk and Hossa and Buffalo having more depth. Should be a fun game to watch and a good test game for both teams, particularly Atlanta who still needs to prove themselves, the battle of Pennsylvania this time where Pittsburgh is probably the better team over Philadelphia, .

In other interesting games are have a Toronto-Montreal rivalry game, Zdeno Chara facing his old Ottawa team for the first time, and the battle of Pennsylvania with Pittshburgh the better team than Philadelphia for probably the first time in a long long time (maybe a decade). The only real interesting western conference matchup is Nashville at Calgary. Both these cup contenders got off to slow starts to the season and both are just start and while Nashville has broken their early season slump Calgary is still looking to break out and put a few wins together. A big win over Nashville could go a long way to making that happen.

It’s a western conference night tonight as the only eastern conference team in action is the Washington Capitals who are in Vancouver to face the Canucks. This should be a fun game to watch as Washington is off to a pretty good start (3-2-3) and seemingly aren’t the horrible team they were last year. Two of the other games feature four of the top teams in the west as Detroit visits Dallas and Anaheim visits Minnesota. The other game features a weak Los Angeles team facing a Columbus team who many expected to be better this season but is off to a slow start.

We have 8 games on schedule tonight. The games I think will be the most interesting are:

Toronto at Ottawa – This game should be a fun game to watch. Toronto will be seeking revenge for a 6-2 loss on Tuesday while Ottawa will be seeking revenge for a Darcy Tucker attack on Patrick Eaves and a Chad Kilger stick attack on Christolf Shubert. Speaking of Tuesdays games, whats with the refs? I enjoyed the added physical play but there were tons of partial hooks and trips that would have been called for penalties in most other games. Not that I am complaining because I think some of this crackdown on obstruction has gone too far.

Atlanta at Philadelphia – Atlanta clearly has been the better team so far this season while Philadelphia has been a disaster. But most teams respond very positively for the first few games after a coaching change plus Atlanta played last night so this game coule end up going either way. The keys to Philadelphia will always ben goaltending and Peter Forsberg. If the Flyers get good goaltening and Forsberg is healthy and play at the top of his game the Flyers will do well. If either of those guys fail there just isn’t enough else there to allow them to win consistantly.

San Jose at Nashville – Yesterday I wrote that San Jose was a big test for Detroit to determin whether they were an elite western conference team or a step below them. This is kind of the same for Nashville. Nashville has gotten off to a bit of a poor start and this is a chance for them to win a big game against a real tough team and prove that they should be considered contenders as well.

Some of the games you should keep an eye on tonight are:

Atlanta vs Carolina: These two teams look like they might battle for top spot in the division. Should be a fun game too as both teams are entertaining to watch.

San Jose at Detroit: Detroit needs to figure out if they are a contending team or a step below. Games such as this one against other top western conference teams will help determine which they are.

Edmonton at Anaheim: Rematch of last years western conference finals and the return of Joffrey Lupul to his former home in Anaheim. We all know that Anaheim has the big two defensemen but after that they are somewhat weak. If you watch this game observe whether Edmonton’s depth of talent up front can expose that weakness. In the salary cap era you can’t really have a lot of top end talent as well as a lot of depth so I wonder whether it is better to have more top end talent like the Ducks or more depth like the Oilers. Personally I am leaning to depth (see Carolina last year, Buffalo, etc.).

Well, last night was a good night on the game prediction night as the algorithm went 6 for 6. That brings the algorithms over record to a nice 17-9. Just 3 games on schedule tonight but two of which should be qutie interesting. First there is the battle of Ontario game as the Senators try to get revenge for a 6-0 Leafs trashing a couple weeks ago. The second interesting game is the game between the Devils and Penguins. Both teams have had mixed sucecss so far this season and with the standings extremely tight in the Atlantic division (Devils 9 points, Penguins, Rangers and Islanders 8 points) getting wins against division rivals is big even though it is still early in the season.

A couple of interesting games today. First, Montreal will try to show that their big win over Colorado on Saturday is no fluke when they take on the top team in the NHL, also known as the Buffalo Sabres. Another interesting game is the Dallas-Vancouver game. This is another big test for the Canucks who have gotten off to a fairly good start but have not made it easy on themselves as they have relied a fair bit on late game comebacks and overtime/shootout wins. For example, on Saturday they tied Nashville with less than 2 minutes left in the game and won it in overtime. The game before against St. Louis they tied it up with less than 30 seconds to play and won it with a goal with 1 second left in overtime. Maybe that is a sign of a good team or maybe it is a sign that they are a lucky team playing with fire just waiting to get burnt. Tonights game against Dallas will be a good test to see which it might be.

Just one game today as it seems the NHL has all but given up trying to compete against the NFL. The game features Los Angeles and Anaheim and of course there is no NFL team in Los Angeles.

Here are the game predictions for today.

Before I say anything else about these predictions let me first say that you should still take these with a grain of salt or two. It is still very early in the season and since these predictions take into account a teams record and the records of the teams they have played and most teams have only played ~6 games there isn’t a lot of track record to go by. That said, there were still reasonably reliable early last season.

Since this is the fist time posting I should explain what everything means. Home team, Road team and Predicted winner are obvious. The confidence is an indicator of how strong the prediction is and an indicator of its likelihood of coming true. Possible confidence levels are Some, Good and Strong. Early in the season you will likely find a lot of Strongs but they should reduce over time as the algorithms predictions have more historic results to work with and the predictions get more refined.

HTOdds and RTOdds are a bit of betting advice and are an indicatator of the odds or money line I would look for if I were betting on the game. HTOdds are for the home team and RTOdds are for the road team. Note that sometimes the odds indicate a favourite that differs from the predicted outcome. This is because they are calculated slightly differently. It doesn’t happen too often but it does happen.

So with all that said, here are tonights predictions. I am going to be keeping track of these predictions in my NHL Pick-em pool so if you want to see how they are doing check out the pool standings.