"They don't call him the best color man in the league for nothing, folks!"

I liked my stats courses in high school / college, so this article interested me greatly.

One would presume that a great deal of the Blues' improvement in GF/GA last year over the year prior came after the coaching change.  BBZ, did your study take into account the "Murray factor" at all?

If, as I suspect, Coach Murray was responsible for most/all of the +55 improvement, and he did so whilst coaching only 60% of the season...I would posit that some of the required improvement this year would be realized simply by having Murray for the full season.  Perhaps that alone would net a ~+20 improvement over '06-'07?  (Or they could tune him out halfway thru this season, thereby rendering my corrolary worthless...but let's ignore that for now.)

So, in reference to the formula that BBZ has devised, that would leave us with ~+35 of additional improvement needed.  That seems reasonable.  With improved goaltending and a healthy McKee, at least half that improvement could come in the GA department.  Will the addition of Kariya, plus the maturation of Stempy, Backes, Boyes, et al get us the additional 15-20 goals in the GF category?  I'm thinking it just might...

Damn, how long 'til the season starts again?   

Good article.  Although I'm kinda surprised that the Iraqi information minister hasn't appeared in this thread yet, shouting, "THERE IS NO TREND!!"   

It would be interesting to see before-and-after splits for the 06-07 Blues, under Kitchen and under Murray.  I would guess that the team played under its Pythagorean prediction during the Kitchen, and over prediction during Murray's tenure.

Well, when you put it that way, I...

WTF?   

Full disclosure:  I have a spreadsheet sitting at home, that I put together somewhere around 2002.  It does the Pythagorean calculation for the NHL for many prior years (the calculation was easier then because every game was worth 2 points.)

I put it together to see whether Brian Sutter's teams tended to overachieve in the regular season.  (Conclusion:  They did, slightly.)  This article has me contemplating whether to update that data, to see if there's a tendency among Andy Murray's teams.

I didn't include only Andy Murray numbers because the smaller the sampling the less accurate it is.   Based on only a part of one season, it would be misleading to post that they were +x number of points because people will tend to think that future results will fall in a linear path to what was accomplished last season.

The problem is that as GA goes down, it becomes exponentially harder to decrease that number.   The same applies to GF...when it goes up, it gets harder and harder to match the increase.

I'll look up the numbers if anyone's really interested and post them.   I just think it's misleading because the 2007-2008 St. Louis Blues will have Murray from day one, not him coming in and changing the team in the middle of the season.

It's more accurate to compare their potential success (and failure) to teams in similar situations last season....which is why I'm thinking that it's reasonable to expect a 35 net goal differential increase this year...and that a +55 would be achieveable.

H'wood and I have had over/under bets for the last two years.   Without looking at Vegas odds, I'd set the over/under this year at about 92 points.

Can I get a sig bet for yay/nay on the playoffs?

I take the yea too, it's Z that's the doubting Thomas.

how'd you do?