Playoff Predictor, Stanley Cup Finals, 2008

Well my predictor is sure doing better than I did in my playoff pools. Going into the conference finals, it was 11 for 12 for predictions, and it got both of the conference finals right as well!

Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.579 0.204
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.421 0.119

Detroit_Red_Wings 0.681 0.498
Dallas_Stars 0.319 0.178

So what's left? The Stanley cup finals start tomorrow night and it should be a great series. So I gave my predictor one final spin to see what it says. It should come as no surprise that Detroit is heavily favoured by the program:

Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.295
Detroit_Red_Wings 0.705

While I'd be happy to say my program went 14/15, I'm still kinda rooting for the penguins. They are an exciting team to watch with a hell of a lot of talent at a very young age. Whoever wins though, the series should be one for the ages.

Heraldk

Playoff Predictor, Round 3 2008

Well the second round of the playoffs is over, and it's time to give my simulator another spin. First, let's look at the results from Round 2:

Montreal_Canadiens 0.616 0.348 0.147
Detroit_Red_Wings0.772 0.530 0.380
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.384 0.174 0.056
Colorado_Avalanche 0.228 0.091 0.039

Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.568 0.289 0.114
San_Jose_Sharks 0.483 0.180 0.094
New_York_Rangers 0.432 0.189 0.064
Dallas_Stars 0.517 0.199 0.107

The simulator goes 3 for 4 this round with the only one not going its way being the Montreal-Philly series. Overall, the simulator's predictions have been 11 for 12. Not too shabby huh?

Here are the predictions of my simulator for the conference finals:

Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.579 0.204
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.421 0.119

Detroit_Red_Wings 0.681 0.498
Dallas_Stars 0.319 0.178

So according to the program, Detroit has just shy of a 50% chance to win the whole thing, and their likely opponents is the Pittsburgh Penguins. Dallas and Pittsburgh are very close for 2nd place and Philly is not liked as much by the program.

See Round 2 and Round 1 for more information.

Heraldk

Playoff Predictions, Round 2, 2008

I posted before the first round playoffs started to present some output from my NHL playoff simulator. How'd it do at predicting the results? Well let's have a look. I removed the later round predictions from the last post just to clean this up and make it easier to read. Correct predictions are in bold.

Montreal_Canadiens 0.720
Detroit_Red_Wings 0.811
Boston_Bruins 0.280
Nashville_Predators 0.189
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.590
San_Jose_Sharks 0.634
Ottawa_Senators 0.410
Calgary_Flames 0.366

Washington_Capitals 0.481
Minnesota_Wild 0.468
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.519
Colorado_Avalanche 0.532
New_Jersey_Devils 0.477
Anaheim_Ducks 0.414
New_York_Rangers 0.523
Dallas_Stars 0.586

Not bad huh? In every case, the favourite team of each match was the one that won. Three of the series went right down to the wire though, and I honestly thought Washington was going to beat Philly in game 7. They were a feel good story this year, along with the Oilers late season push to the playoffs that fell *just* short. San Jose and Montreal almost choked in the first round on series leads, but managed to pull through in the end.

So what does the simulator say for the next round? Once again the first column is the probability of winning that round. The second column is the probability of winning the conference final, and the third column is the probability of taking home the cup. This run is one million playoff simulations seeded with the results of the first playoff round.

Montreal_Canadiens 0.616 0.348 0.147
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.568 0.289 0.114
New_York_Rangers 0.432 0.189 0.064
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.384 0.174 0.056

Detroit_Red_Wings 0.772 0.530 0.380
San_Jose_Sharks 0.483 0.180 0.094
Dallas_Stars 0.517 0.199 0.107
Colorado_Avalanche 0.228 0.091 0.039

Detroit, Dallas, Montreal, and Pittsburgh are the favourites according to the simulator. The only selection that is a bit surprising for this round is Dallas - but I'm not too surprised by that considering some of the numbers they put up this year. If they can shut down Thornton, they've got a pretty good shot at the conference finals.

Overall Detroit still has the highest probability of winning the cup, up to 38% now. Montreal and Pittsburgh are neck and neck for second place in probability of winning the cup. Dallas and San Jose are next and the last three have a 6% or less chance.

Now that the first round is out, the last remaining Canadian team is my second favourite team in the league: the Montreal Canadiens. So since the Oil are down and out, I'm cheering for them. Push that 14.7% edge boys!

Heraldk

Predicting the NHL Playoffs 07/08

I've become increasingly interested in computer solutions and simulations for domains where you might not expect something can be done. One domain that I've been more and more interested in is NHL hockey -- a sport that I'm a fan of. So before the 2007/2008 playoffs started, I decided to write a simulator that figured out how likely it was that each team won the stanley cup based on their regular season statistics. The results are below, with each team's probability of making it past each round the numbers in the columns. So the Montreal Canadiens have a 72% chance of beating the bruins, and a 12.2% chance of winning the cup.

Montreal_Canadiens 0.720 0.446 0.264 0.122
Pittsburgh_Penguins 0.590 0.362 0.193 0.083
Washington_Capitals 0.481 0.224 0.097 0.033
New_Jersey_Devils 0.477 0.217 0.096 0.034
New_York_Rangers 0.523 0.250 0.116 0.043
Philadelphia_Flyers 0.519 0.236 0.110 0.039
Ottawa_Senators 0.410 0.167 0.086 0.030
Boston_Bruins 0.280 0.098 0.039 0.010

Detroit_Red_Wings 0.811 0.622 0.449 0.330
San_Jose_Sharks 0.634 0.368 0.150 0.082
Minnesota_Wild 0.468 0.187 0.056 0.024
Anaheim_Ducks 0.414 0.182 0.069 0.033
Dallas_Stars 0.586 0.306 0.141 0.079
Colorado_Avalanche 0.532 0.178 0.068 0.031
Calgary_Flames 0.366 0.086 0.037 0.015
Nashville_Predators 0.189 0.072 0.030 0.012

What's startling is Detroit's enormous 33% chance of winning the whole thing. A couple of other surprises include Dallas' relatively high probability of winning the cup (7.9%). It's much higher than the Ducks or Avs which are next to them in the standings.

How does this work? I basically calculate the average goals a team is expected to score against their opposing team by using the season goals-for and goals-against numbers. I use this to simulate games between teams and run entire playoff simulations. The probabilities above are simply the number of times that team reaches the next round divided by the number of simulations.

I don't have very many features added in that I would like to add. One particular one is a recency statistic that increases the relevance of the last 20 games of the season. I expect that such a statistic will greatly increase San Jose and Washington's chances of winning the cup and probably dampen Dallas' chances.

Credit to Darse for giving me some hints and tips on how to create my simulator. Hopefully I'll get a chance to work on it a bit more so that I can build in some more statistics to help it make a more informed decision.

Heraldk

Oiler Pregame

My friend and roommate was kind enough to give me a spare ticket he had for a recent hockey game between the Oilers and the Minnesota Wild. It was a fun night, and our Oilers managed to win the game! I wish the Oilers had managed to put together a better season this year. It's looking like they won't make the playoffs this year :(

Game On

The past three games have been very encouraging for the Oilers. We're battling through some pretty intense injury trouble, but with last night's win in LA, we're now just one game shy of .500, and a pair of points out of a playoff spot. The two wins against Anaheim are HUGE for a couple of reasons. The first is obviously that wins are important against any team. But beating down Anaheim means that we are more likely to finish above them in the standings - meaning the draft pick we have from them is worth more than the one we gave up for Dustin Penner. The Kevin Lowe vs Brian Burke war seems to be evening out a little more. If the oilers can turn this season around, I think the Dustin Penner offer sheet was a pretty good move for Kevin Lowe - particularly since Penner has been playing better and better over the last few games.

The Edmonton Oilers, in the past couple of years, have been a frustratingly fun team to watch. Even in 05/06 when we made the run to the cup, the Oilers just squeaked into the playoffs. They did so by beating the good teams, and losing to the bad teams ... which made no sense. Last year's season was a terrible disappointment, but the team had so much trouble scoring. Add in the injury troubles that plagued the oilers in the late season, and it really was a recipe for disaster.

I still think the experts are crazy to think they can just write off the oilers as contenders. Anything can happen in the new NHL, and the oilers have a lot of the right ingredients to turn things around. Granted, they have a lot of young and unexperienced players on their team, but there is a lot of skill there, and if the elements click into place, I wouldn't be surprised to see this team playoff bound.

Heraldk

Maddening Oilers

Man, I just can't shake the feeling that the Oilers have some chance to go on a stretch of wins. They've got so much talent - they just can't seem to put it together. Of course, the crazy number of injuries isn't helping. If the Oilers started getting healthy all of a sudden, I think we'd be looking at a particularly good team. The game last night against Vancouver was a lot of fun to watch. It was also a nail-biter, and every time Vancouver got some pressure on us I got nervous. But Mathieu Garon managed to put on A SHOW and stopped everything that Vancouver sent his way - including three shootout attempts! The Oil looked dangerous for parts of the game, but they seem to have this bad habit of giving the puck away in the neutral zone (or worse, in their own end). I don't know how to get them to do this, but they need to be able to maintain control of the puck for longer parts of the game or we're going to continue having trouble maintaining any pressure.

Tonight's game was worse for that score. We just couldn't keep constant pressure on the puck and it seemed like every second shift we'd give the puck away several times. Ewww. Hockey like that is maddening to watch for the fan. Glad to see Jarret Stoll get a couple goals though. They were a bit ugly, but I'm glad to see him snap his goal drought. Let's hope he continues to recover last year's form!

Maybe their play tonight was due to the back-to-back schedule. I sure hope they can start building some consistency into their game ... if they do, and start to get healthy ... I seriously think we've got a playoff bound team. Until then though, we're in some trouble.

Heraldk

Predictions

I'm not going to give my predictions for the upcoming NHL season, although I suppose it has already started officially since there's been a couple of games have been played over in London. I am, however, going to rant a little about the predictions of other "experts". It seems that hockey experts agree that the Oilers have no shot at making the playoffs this year. I have one thing to say: why do these so called "experts" always sell the Oil short? It doesn't seem all that long ago when the Oilers were pushing for the 8th and final playoff spot a couple years ago. They were a team that was fighting it's own potential. I knew the team had a lot of talent, but it seemed that every couple of games, they'd lose a you-should-win-this-game type scenario and they'd slip back a notch. They did it, but barely. In the first round that year, they were up against the high powered Detroit Red Wings. Everyone wrote Edmonton off and had them down in out quickly. Surprise, surprise when the Oil suddenly became the team they were capable of becoming and took down not only Detroit, but San Jose, Anaheim, and almost Carolina en route to the stanley cup final.

Last year was a painful year for the average Oiler fan. The team struggled in mediocrity for most of the season and then got hit by a terrible injury streak that took most of the regulars out of the lineup. As a result, the team skidded to a halt and failed to win most of their remaining games.

The offseason was a high-drama period where the Oilers made a large number of moves and almost completely re-tooled. Powered by the new blue-liners of Pitkanen and Souray, they have far more power on defence than they had last year. Penner adds some size and some scoring punch and Sanderson is a wily veteran who should contribute as well. The real exciting thing for this upcoming season though is the chance for some of the youth to shine. The Oilers have several young players, in addition to Ales Hemsky, who all have a shot of hitting it big this year. These guys include Gagner, Nilsson, Brodziak, Pouliot, and Cogliano. To me, this is super exciting ... and I have a hard time believing that the Oilers are going to have trouble making the playoffs.

But lets take a look at what the experts think. One of the oft-quoted stats from last year is +/-. I'm not sure how they can compare player's +/- stats correctly when these numbers are so very biased on the team they were playing for. For example, Souray and Pitkanen both played on teams that didn't make the playoffs last year. This typically means that those teams got scored on more often than they scored (duh). So take two important defencemen who play big minutes for their teams and put them on clubs that are losing. What happens to their plus minus? It plummets. Whoop-dee-doo. I'm not saying the statistic is meaningless. I'm just saying that you need to make sure you keep in mind what you're trying to compare.

A lot of analysis seems to compare how a team has changed from the previous year. Unfortunately, this also is a problem. How do the experts know that the "winners" of the free agency craziness (the rangers and the flyers) are going to gel and mesh the star players they signed? Who's to say that teams with a bunch of young talent are going to not mesh and start winning games? The past doesn't necessarily tell the future, folks - especially when so much has changed from last season.

One of the things I think many people forget is that the new collective bargaining agreement is giving teams some level ground to play on. It's not completely level, that's for sure, but teams are much more evenly matched than they used to be. Remember the Oiler's heyday way back when they were winning cups every year? That team was so stacked that you had to expect great things from them. Fast forward to today - there are far fewer teams that looked that stacked in comparison. Maybe the penguins look a bit awesome at the moment ... but the division from them to the next closest team is far smaller than for the Oilers back in the day. The salary cap helps balance out the skill players among the teams, and as a result, nearly any team has a chance to do well enough to hit the playoffs. So I don't think last year means nearly as much as the experts seem to think. I also don't think they have ever given the Oilers enough credit.

So I think the Oilers have a good chance of doing well this season, and we'll just have to see how it turns out.

Go Oilers! Heraldk

Match Aftermath

So the match is over, and I had a mere four and a half hours of sleep. Ouch. Still, it was a lot of fun. I got up and got some coffee and breakfast at Tim Hortons before heading up to the poker round table. I think people's tempers were short which meant that there was a bit of unhappiness amongst some of the team members. I hope things sorted themselves out, but it wasn't too pretty for awhile. Anyways, it was cool to meet up with some people who've started to gather and research computers playing poker. It should be cool to see what these guys come up with as they come up to speed. After the round table, I hung around to see the general games playing man-machine match. From what I'd heard, the generic game playing competition was poorly run this year, and it even ran with some controversy. The games that were selected for the playoffs were all very similar and were from a class of games that the best preliminary round player had trouble with. Ugh. Plus, the man-machine match they had was a little pathetic. The played a game that if the humans figured out how the rules work, it was trivial for them to win. So ... that's not a good thing to have in a "fair" match. Oh well. My friend Yngvi won the title, but that was partly due to an error by the other program. Yngvi himself knows the system for the games competition needs fixing, so hopefully changes are made soon.

After witnessing that, I worked on the man-machine web site for awhile as I spent my first session in a real AAAI talk. Heh - too much stuff for me to do. The man-machine web site needs a ton of work, but I'm gonna have to get to that slowly over the next few days. Lots of press articles to link to!

In the afternoon I got the video done that you see in the post before this. I felt that it needed to get done and uploaded since people needed to see what Ali and Phil said about the bots and the outcome of the match.

After that I hung around for awhile and ended up going to the poster session. That was really cool - there was a bunch of food, and I got to talk to a few people including Brett from the University of Minnesota who started working on poker. We talked for a long time about DIVAT and variance and vexbot, and ... how to calculate celcius from fahrenheit. Fun times.

After the poster session, we had found out that there was going to be a huge fireworks display in town. Apparently they do a fireworks contest and so Spain's turn was today and Canada's turn is Saturday. So we bustled down to river front and I borrowed Neil's tripod and I got a ton of photos. I hope some of them turned out! It was hard since people kept moving into my photo :P

So now I'm just waiting for my photos to finish copying and then I'm gonna crash for the night. G'nite all!

Heraldk

A New Edmonton Arena

Anyone who's been reading the journal lately knows that there seems to be an ongoing debate over the council's investigation into building a new arena in downtown Edmonton to replace Rexall Place. There's been a barrage of articles over the past few days pointing out some of the advantages and disadvantages to the proposal ... and I guess I shouldn't be surprised there is such hot debate over the topic. It is, after all, a large investment of city resources. I'm cautiously in favour of a new arena in the downtown core, but I've been waiting to weigh in on the issue until I'd read a few more articles in the paper. I think today's article by Scott McKeen convinces me that it's a good idea, and touches on many of the complaints that people have with the arena.

So, why do we need a new arena? Well the reality of the situation is that Rexall is aging - particularly when compared to arenas in other cities. It's the 2nd oldest building the remains in active use in the NHL. From the Oiler's perspective, its hard to remain competitive if they can't sell as many seats or luxury boxes as other teams. If you've been reading my blog, you know I'm an Oiler fanboy, so you'll know that I'm biased about this from the start. But before you chastise me for being biased, Scott McKeen makes the point that Rexall is not just used for Oiler games... a new arena would be usable to attract some of the world's biggest musical acts as well. Not only that, one should only look back to this time last year when the Oilers were making their unlikely run through the playoffs to know how important the Oilers are to this city. Don't you think they deserve the chance to remain competitive - particularly when a competitive Oiler team makes this city swell with pride?

So I believe a new arena is warranted. So what are the issues? Well cost is one big one. Already though, it looks like there are several options that will require much less taxpayer dollars to build the arena. As the committee looks at it in more detail, we'll see what they come up with. However, several people more in the know than I remain confident that much of the cost can be absorbed from other sources. Sounds good to me.

As to the location - why not build the arena downtown? Downtown is starting to get much more lively as we are finally seeing condos being built in the core. (I'm happy that the city is finally starting to build up a little - the sprawl of this city is kind of disgusting). Building the arena downtown can only help - particularly since the current proposal is to build it in an area of downtown that isn't exactly bustling at the moment. You have to go west of city hall to really see active part of downtown. Thousands of people pouring into downtown to watch the latest hockey game or concert -- sounds like a good plan to get people downtown. The inevitable businesses that pop up around and in the facility will help draw people to arrive downtown early and have them stay late.

To be honest, I am a little biased. And I don't know all the issues. I do however, have a hard time believing that this isn't a good idea for the city. Many articles have pointed at other cities and the success of downtown arenas there -- places like Vancouver and Columbus and Denver and ... well I forget all of them, but there's quite a few. I don't know all the information, but maybe someone can point out to me why a new downtown arena in Edmonton can hurt us.

Heraldk

Run Run Run

Last night was crazy. I had two campus rec intramural playoff games, one Volleyball and one floor hockey which were at almost overlapping times. I decided to play the volleyball one because if we won, then we'd make the final which was the same night. So I went there and we lost really fast. It was 8:00 - about the time our floor hockey game was to start. So I ran over to the bus stop and saw that the bus to get over there was there! I hopped on, and got to the gym to find my team down a goal with 3 minutes or so left. I grab a guy's stick and play the remaining two minutes straight -- unfortunately we couldn't tie the game up. *sigh*.

So then I go home and sit down at my computer where I code a script that will help the development of the poker bot I'm working on ... and don't finish that until 3 in the morning. I'm TIRED.

So if you'll excuse me, maybe I'll go take a nap. Heraldk

The Ryan Smyth Trade

Ugh. I hate think that we're giving up on the season. Last year's playoff run was so much fun that I was really hoping we'd be able to get at least one playoff series this year. However, with the Ryan Smyth trade that happened earlier today before the trade deadline, Kevin Lowe is throwing in the towel for this season. The oilers *might* still make the playoffs, but that's looking pretty unlikely given how they played tonight against Phoenix. Reading the Edmonton Oiler forums is mildly entertaining though. People are so attached to Smytty ... and I admit I was too. But fans are so betrayed that Smyth was traded ... but what they don't realize is that Kevin Lowe was put in a rather awkward position. The Oil weren't in good shape to make the playoffs, and the contract negotiations with Smyth weren't going so hot. So what do you do? Keep him for the rest of a season that is unlikely to be a playoff year, and chance that he won't re-sign at the end of the year? Or get what you can get for him and attempt to sign him in the offseason if you'd like to (or go after a higher impact guy if one is available). Seems like a pretty clear decision to me!

The age of franchise players is almost over. The number of players who actually stick with one team their entire career are diminishing quickly. Smyth is really one of the last of his kind ... so I'm sorry fans -- you're gonna have to get used to this.

Now that I've got that out of the way, we can take a look at the trade. I think Kevin Lowe got an amazing deal. He picked up two players who were drafted in the first round, and a first round pick in the upcoming draft. That means we get THREE first round picks in the upcoming draft! Sounds like we're in the position to either get some really good young talent, or trade some young talent for some current talent. As much as I hate the idea that my dear Oil are giving up on the year, I can't complain about this trade that much.

Heraldk

Torino Journal: Day Four and Five

Yup, my journal is coming slowly but surely. Soon, I'll find myself catching up on my boston/new york journal! Uhoh... For previous entries in my Torino Journal, see Day One, Day Two, or Day Three

We got up the next morning for the first day of the conference. The conference was held at a different location than the olympiad so we needed to find our way to a new location. Unfortunately, we got turned around and missed most of the first talk. The conference was held in a really cool room with two statues at the front of the room. It totally didn't feel like a place you'd attend classes, but I gather that's precisely what one does if taking classes at this university.

The room was situated in a building which had an inside courtyard. In fact, there was quite a blurry line between inside and outside. As soon as you step outside your room, you may have a roof over your head, but the balcony you happen to be on is filled with fresh air from the outdoor courtyard. The building was totally beautiful and I wandered around the area taking photos of the various statues that lined the walls of the area (during breaks of course!).

After the morning conference talks were over we traveled down the the oval to begin the olympiad (making a quick stop for lunch). After making a couple preparations, we thought we were ready. We beat the Australian program with no real trouble in those two games, but then we lost two games against the champion from the last olympiad. Argh! It turned out we had a couple of rather embarassing bugs. Frankly, none of us really could believe that we had missed them. Oops! Shows the need for some real play testing hmm?

After the competition we madly tried to fix the bugs. They were really dumb, but also quite elusive and took us a long time to solve. By the time we had tracked down the problem it was quite late so we decided to return to our hotel room. Once there we left to get some food and that outing turned out to last quite awhile as we enjoyed quite a bit of red wine, and some tasty Italian cuisine. I wish I could get late night food like that here in town!!

We got back to our hotel really really late, but still had to fix the problems we had discovered. Argh! We ended up crashing before everything was fixed, and the next morning missed the conference as we attempted to get the program up and running in a state we were comfortable with. Turns out that didn't really happen.

Finally we had to return to the oval so we packed up our program, and headed down there. The competition started up and we lost our games to the champion ensuring that we were fighting for 2nd place. Easy, we thought ...

Turns out that the Australian program had a learning algorithm in it and it was much tougher after playing the other games during the tournament. Our program was a little shaky, and we actually lost the first game against the program! Uhoh. We played the next game, hoping to win so we could avoid a playoff to decide the winning program. At this point we were pretty tired and really didn't want to spend that night looking at our program and getting it ready for a playoff!

Our program looked to have a good start, but then it got itself into trouble. Enough so that it actually figured it had lost the game. Thankfully, the part of the code that handled playing "tough" moves in a lost position saved our bacon as the other program didn't realize it had won (it wasn't a trivial win) and messed up so we were able to recover and win the match. Whew!

Having got past that scare, we journeyed a little ways to another little restaurant for dinner which served us another wonderful meal. Boy were we ever being spoiled with good food!

We returned to our hotel room to relax and play some cards. Then we fell asleep tired, but ready to get some rest for the next day which we planned to go see some sights!

The conclusion to my journal comes next time!

Heraldk

First Oilers Playoff Game

Last night I was able to go to my first ever playoff hockey game, and boy was it a blast! The crowd was loud, half drunk and cheering really hard for the hometown Oilers. It was so easy to join in the loud cheering that I no longer have much of a voice today. The Oilers played an impressive game and deserved to win. They played an amazing first two periods of hockey. In the second period, Detroit just couldn't get anything going, and we walked all over them. Detroit managed to come back in the third which set the stage for a nail-biting overtime period that was almost too much. We sat on the edge of our seats for the entire time standing up everytime the Oilers came close to scoring. Finally, the Oiler's put the winner in and we all cheered like mad (I dunno where I found the voice to cheer!). There are three players that I think deserve special mention for this particular game. Chris Pronger, Michael Peca and Brad Winchester. Chris Pronger is a no-brainer. He played a ridiculous 47 minutes last night! With the game going a little shy of 90 minutes, there is no arguing that Pronger is a huge reason the Oilers are doing so well.

Second, Peca. I was immensely impressed with his play last night. There was a huge number of key little defensive plays that I picked up on during the game and I was just so impressed.

Third, Winchester. Where the hell did this guy come from? He played an incredible game, particularly in the first two periods. He had a huge number of offensive chances. He was on the ice for at least 2 of our goals, and he made some very impressive heads-up plays. This guy is going to be huge in a year or two. Heck, he's huge NOW!

There is only one thing I really didn't like about the playoff game experience. Many fans were boo-ing in the middle of the US national anthem. I'm sorry, but that's just not classy. It sickens me that fans think this is a good idea. Have some respect people! Okay I'm done.

Heraldk

Playoffs!

When the Oilers are in the playoffs, this is my favourite time of the year. Well, maybe not my only favourite time of year ... but it certainly ranks high! The Oiler game last night was exciting playoff hockey. Despite the disappointing finish, I think the Oil can certainly recover from the loss and come out strong tomorrow. I'm frankly confused with the "afternoon" game tomorrow though. The game starts at 11:00 am mountain time, and the only reason I can think of that they have it that early is because they want to put the triple header of hockey all day on Sunday.

But hockey players are used to coming out to play in the evening. The Oiler game is in the MORNING for us Albertans. Pro or not, those hockey players are going to be way out of their normal hockey game routine ... and I have a feeling we're going to see a sluggish game tomorrow morning despite the importance of the game.

Why is it so important to have a triple header of hockey? Frankly, I don't know.

Anyways, now that I'm done ranting, I watched the Montreal-Carolina game tonight, and was really impressed. I'm kind of a closet Montreal Canadien fan ... they're my favourite team from the Eastern conference and I was glad that they made the playoffs. I was even more happy to see them come out and play a really strong game against Carolina, which is apparently one of the best teams in the East.

Hopefully Edmonton can get their cylinders firing up and take on Detroit with all the skill I know they posess. I'd love to be cheering Edmonton and Montreal all the way to the stanley cup final!!

Heraldk

Oilers Make the Playoffs!

Its been an up and down season for my beloved Oilers. At times it has been damn frustrating to watch the team choke against weaker teams. At others, we seem to pull out all the stops and are able to come up with a big win here or there. They just never seem to make it easy on themselves. They've got a lot of talent, and there really should be no doubt that they make the playoffs. If only it were that easy.

Tonight was the 2nd last game of the season. Thanks the Shark's beating the Canuck's last night, it put us in the position to win a playoff spot - if we won our game and Vancouver lost.

Let me just say that the game was a little stressful. To my eye, the refs seemed to miss several penalties. Oh well! The game went down to the wire (which so many of our games seem to) and Ales Hemsky scored the winner with 30+ seconds left to play. A little scoreboard watching later, and San Jose beat Vancouver 5-3. So we're in!

I'm hoping to be able to get to at least one of the playoff games this year. Tickets are gonna be in high demand though, so it's going to be really hard to even get one pair of tickets. *sigh*. Wish me luck!

But we're in! Yay!

Paper Push

Well, lets see how this goes. Darse and I are working on a paper that is due on Thursday at some undefined time on that day. The nervous thing is that this paper is much less complete than the last paper I worked on. There's *a lot* of writing to do yet. So the next couple days are going to be pretty busy for that! After that, I get to really start concentrating on the Hex codebase in a push to get our hex program ready for Italy (which is looking like a pretty sure thing, as far as these tihngs go). I'm pretty excited!

But first, this paper! This has been a very busy week with many things getting my attention. I had a playoff intramural floor hockey game on Monday, and the playoffs for volleyball are on Thursday. On top of this maddeningly busy schedule, I'm still attempting to make it to the gym most days of the week ... which is helping burn me out faster than before. Ugh.

So ... wish me luck on getting through the week!

Heraldk

Big trades for the Oilers

Well, hockey season is super exciting this time of year. The trade deadline was yesterday, and our Edmonton Oilers are looking poised to make a push higher into the standings and deeper into the playoffs. Here's the trades we made: To Minnesota: 1st round draft pick, conditional 3rd round draft pick To Edmonton: Dwayne Roloson

Edmonton gets a pretty good goaltender and they don't even have to break up any of the team to do so. This really is about as good as it could've got since so many teams are looking for goaltenders. Not only that, teams that were supposed to be offering goalies decided not to trade them after all (Buffalo, Phoenix, etc). So in theory, Edmonton now has their goalie situation sorted out. Here's hoping!

To Boston: Marty Reasoner, Yan Stasny, and a 2nd round draft pick. To Edmonton: Sergei Samsonov

In this trade, the Oilers get a speedy winger who won the 1998 calder trophy, and can score goals. In return, they don't give up all that much at all. I have never really been impressed with Reasoner (though I have had no reason to dislike him). So we give up some prospects for a fast player who looks to fit right into the Oiler style of hockey ... sounds like a good deal to me!

Assuming the team continues to play as well as they have (lots of blocked shots, 2nd fewest shots on goal in the NHL, decent scoring power) ... we should see the team finish strongly in the last 20 games of the season and I am really looking forward to seeing them go deep into the playoffs.

Gooooo Oilers!

Heraldk

Floor Hockey playoffs

So I'm a member of the computer science grad school floor hockey team. We're playing in a division that isn't high on the competitive scale, but of course everyone likes to win. We finished the regular season (all of three games) with an 0-3 record, but I don't think that record was fully deserved. We actually played pretty well, and didn't lose by more than 2 goals on any of those games. For those unfamiliar with the campus rec floor hockey league, the games tend to be high scoring affairs with many lopsided wins happening. Our games we played had scores of 3-1, 5-4, and 5-3. Amazingly low scoring, tight games for the league! Had the ball bounced in our favour a little more we would've potentially won all three of our regular season games. So last night we played our first playoff game. If we won, we would go on to the final. We came out firing ... scoring three goals in the first period. We only had 7 guys besides our goalie, so we tired ourselves out pretty fast. But after getting up 3-0, we were able to hold the opposing team to only one goal in the 2nd period. Our goalie played fantastic, and we ended up winning 4-1. Several hilight reel saves from our goalie and some pretty clutch defensive plays including a penalty kill in the third period were what backstopped our win.

Oh, and I scored my second goal of the season, which means I've now scored more goals this season than all others combined. Haha. I'm not exactly an offensive player. In fact, I'm lucky that my shot this time around actually made it in, because I had a huge amount of net to shoot at but I hit the post instead and it bounced in from there. *whew*. I like to play a defensive minded game where I knock the ball off my opponent's stick and send them running back for it. I leave the fancy plays for those who can make them ;-)

So we're on to the final next week. Wish us luck! We could win our second campus rec t-shirt in as many years!

Heraldk