Sports: October 2005 Archives

If a team loses in overtime or a shootout, that is not a loss. It is an overtime loss. If the Bruins last six games are three losses, then a win, then two overtime losses, that is not a record of five losses and one win in the last six games.

What's the difference? Well, you don't actually lose anything with an overtime loss. You get one point. Your record -- as a percentage -- remains what it was. You don't sink, you don't swim: you tread water. It is exactly like what used to be a tie, in all respects. They call it an "overtime loss," but they treat it like a tie.

You'd think ESPN would get that sort of thing correct, since they are supposedly experts on sports.

Shootouts in hockey are lame. Yes, they are exciting. But they are also anti-climactic.

It's like if you are watching Star Wars, and right after Leia gives the medals to Han and Luke, Chewie took out a sword and cut her head off.

Tonight I saw my first regular season NHL shootout, and before it even started, I was thinking, "65 minutes of hard-fought hockey, and it comes down to this?" Six guys and two goalies isn't hockey. It's a sideshow.

Hockey is teamwork, offense and defense. If one team plays better as a team than the other, but the other has a better goalie or a better shooter, then the latter team has the advantage in the shootout.

People say they needed to get rid of ties. Maybe for marketing reasons, but I don't get it. They say people left unsatisfied when ties result. Good, they should, because it's a lame ending. But I don't feel satsified after a shootout, either. And not just because my team lost; if the Bruins had won, I'd have feel like we'd stolen a free point. Which is better I suppose, but not enough that it warrants screwing up the game.

Of course, it's not about the game. It's about marketing the game to people who don't already like it. And those people love shootouts, unfortunately.

I fetched the CSV version of the Boston Bruins schedule, and then wrote this script to import it into iCal using Mac::Glue. Hooray.

Update: The CSV file has incorrect dates for when the time is past midnight, so it has games going from 10 p.m. on the 4th to 1 a.m. on the 4th. Oops. Also added quick DST calculation.

#!/usr/bin/perl
 
### first make empty "Bruins" calendar in iCal!
 
use strict;
use warnings;
 
use Date::Parse;
 
use Mac::Glue ':all';
 
my $ical = new Mac::Glue 'iCal';
 
my $bcal = $ical->obj(calendar => whose(title => equals => 'Bruins'));
my $bloc = location(end => $bcal);
 
my($dsts) = str2time('April 2 2006');
my($dste) = str2time('October 30 2005');
 
while (<DATA>) {
    next unless m{^(Boston Bruins (at|vs\.) ([^,]+)),((\d+)/(\d+)/(\d+),(\d+):(\d+):00 ([AP]M)),((\d+)/(\d+)/(\d+),(\d+):(\d+):00 ([AP]M)),};
    my($summ, $start, $end) = ($1, $4, $11);
 
    $start = str2time($start);
    $end   = str2time($end);
    $end += 86400 if $start > $end;
 
    my $adj = 3600 * ( ($start < $dsts && $start > $dste) ? 4 : 3 );
    $_ -= $adj for ($start, $end);
 
#    printf "%d : %s : %s : %s\n", $adj, $summ, scalar(localtime $start), scalar(localtime $end);
#    next;
 
    $ical->make(
        new => 'event',
        at  => $bloc,
        with_properties => {
            summary    => $summ,
            start_date => $start,
            end_date   => $end,
        }
    );
}
 
#Subject,StartDate,StartTime,EndDate,EndT ime,Alldayevent,Reminderonoff,ReminderDate,Reminde rTime,Description,Location,Priority,Private,Sensit ivity,Showtimeas
__END__
Boston Bruins vs. Montreal,10/5/2005,7:00:00 PM,10/5/2005,10:00:00 PM,FALSE,TRUE,10/5/2005,12:00:00 PM,,TD Banknorth Garden,Normal,TRUE,Normal,0
Boston Bruins at Buffalo,10/7/2005,8:00:00 PM,10/7/2005,11:00:00 PM,FALSE,TRUE,10/7/2005,4:00:00 PM,,Away,Normal,TRUE,Normal,0

In the mid-90s, the Boston Bruins ended the longest consecutive playoff appearance streak* in U.S. sports history at 29 seasons. The next longest streak at the time was 27, by the Chicago Blackhawks. They ended their streak the following season.

Last year, the Boston Red Sox ended one of the longest championshipless streaks in sports history at 86 years. The next greater streak at the time was 87, by the Chicago White Sox. Do you see where I am going with this?

Also: the Red Sox -- who have won six World Series -- have never won the World Series in a year when the Boston Bruins were playing (as the Bruins did not exist until about 10 years after the 1918 win, and were not playing in 2004-2005, due to the lockout). If I were not such a huge hockey fan, I would call for the team's elimination.

On the other hand, maybe the Sox only won because God knew without hockey, we would be terribly depressed unless something big happened.

Game 2 of the 2005-2006 season begins in 15 minutes. Go Bruins!

* OK, I know that doesn't sound all that impressive, since it is hockey, where even teams with losing records can make the playoffs, but they also had a winning record each of those seasons. So nyah.

The MLB rules are retarded. They state -- as they have for years -- that if two teams tie for the division, that the division title will be determined by a playoff game.

There's one exception though, instituted in the mid-90s. If the two teams have a better record than any second-place team in any other division, then the team with the better head-to-head record wins the division title.

The logic is simple: in this case, both teams are going to the playoffs, since the Wild Card will be won by the other team. So why play a playoff game -- wasting valuable energy for the pitchers -- to merely determine seeding?

But it's not merely seeding, it's also the division championship on the line, and to declare one team the winner of a championship based an arbitrary tiebreaker, especially when it had not been done that way ever before, is ridiculous.

Of course, this happens in other sports. But baseball is not other sports. It has more history and the division title holds more significance.

The Red Sox are not the only team in baseball history to have the best record in the division and not be declared the division champs. The 2001 St. Louis Cardinals, like the Red Sox, had the second best record in the league, and tied for the best in the division, but lost the head-to-head tiebreaker: their fans call that year's team the "co-division champs."

So screw it, I am declaring the Sox the champs, and hopefully the Sox management has the cajones to assert the Sox as the champs, too.