There are NOT too Many Hockey Teams in New York

Peter King in his Monday Morning Quarterback column mad the following column about the NHL and New York:

"b. I worry about the NHL. Last week, on the same night, all starting at 7 p.m., three teams within 35 miles -- the Islanders, Rangers and Devils -- all dropped the puck. And 97 miles south of the Devils' rink in Newark, the Flyers played. Also at 7.

c. And Quebec City can't get a team?"

I'm not sure what his complaint here is, but if it is the idea that there are too many hockey teams in New York or New York and Philadelphia then he is completely off base. There are 22.2 million people in the New York metropolitan area (CSA) and 6.5 million in Philadelphia. There are 715,000 in Quebec City and only 8 million in all of Quebec. There are more people in the combination of the metropolitan areas of New York, Philadelphia, Hartford, Albany, Allentown, Harrisburg, Scranton, York (PA), Lancaster, Atlantic City and Norwich, than there are in all of Canada.

This is not a region that has no interest in hockey. The Rangers and Flyers are two of the league's flagship franchises. Also, last I checked New York is the media capital of the continent, so having an excessive presence there would probably not have much of a downside.

There are not too many professional sports teams in New York!

NHL Realignment

The NHL is considering changing its playoff structure (see here and here). The second article lays out two big advantages for TV. First a little background. Here is a listing of teams by time zone:

Eastern: 16

Central: 6

Mountain: 4*

Pacific: 4

* I'm assuming that Phoenix is in Mountain, even though it actually would be the equivalent of Pacific Time for the beginning and end of the season. Arizona doesn't go on Daylight savings.

So an Eastern Time team has to play in the Western Conference because more than half the teams are in the Eastern Time zone. That team is not decided in the current plan; it will either be Columbus or Detroit.

The new plan has goes from 6 divisions of 5 to 4 divisions of 7 or 8. Also the schedule would change from 24 intra-division games, 40 inter-division, intra-conference games and 18 inter-conference games to 36 intra-division games and then two games against each other team regardless of conference. Whichever Eastern-Time team gets stuck in the Western Conference would definitely have an improved schedule.

Old schedule:

Eastern: 9

Central: 16

Mountain: 8

Pacific: 8

New schedule:

Eastern: 15

Central: 18

Mountain: 4

Pacific: 4

The Red Wings would trade 8 Mountain or Pacific games for 6 additional Eastern games and 2 additional Central games.

However, the second supposed advantage is to help the Pacific teams have fewer Eastern trips. I don't see that helping under the proposed schedule:

Old schedule:

Eastern: 11

Central: 12

Mountain: 9

Pacific: 9

New schedule:

Eastern: 16

Central: 6

Mountain: ~11 (would range from 10-12)

Pacific: ~8 (would range from 7-9, the total across Mountain and Pacific would by 19)

So the Pacific teams end up having one fewer trip to the Eastern and Central, but five more of them will be further east.

{Offline H/T to my brother}.

2011 Nobel Prize in Econ Preditions

Since I did not correctly predict last year's Nobel Prize winners, my predictions for this year will look fairly similar to last year's.

1. Lars P. Hansen and/or Hal White. I had them first last year and it has been one additional year since the last econometrics selection.

2. Richard Thaler and/or Robert Schiller.

4. Gordon Tullock. Trendier choice than last year.

4. Paul Romer. I dropped him behind Tullock since Macro won last year.

2011 MVPs at All-Star Break

Here are my picks for the NL and AL MVP at the All-Star Break. I'm a little behind in posting one of these for this season, but I was having a hard time distinguishing the players when I tried coming up with a list in May and mid-June.

NL
Matt Kemp
Jose Reyes
Andrew McCutchen
Roy Halladay
Ryan Braun
Prince Fielder
Shane Victorino
Joey Votto
Cole Hamels
Troy Tulowitzki

AL
Jose Bautista
Adrian Gonzalez
Jacoby Ellsbury
Curtis Granderson
Ben Zobrist
Jered Weaver
Dustin Pedroia
Justin Verlander
C. C. Sabathia
Ian Kinsler

The Cubs at .500

The Cub Reporter used much of the off-season to describe the Cubs' off-season plan as "Project .500". The Cubs have decided to take that to extremes. After each of their ten even-numbered games they have had an even record. This is their sequence of games so far this season:

LWLWWLWLLWLWLWLWWLLW

This looks like the type of sequence someone would make up trying to make the sequence look random.

I noticed this pattern when the Cubs were 7-7, but I wasn't sure if it was that unusual. The fact that they are the first team to go 1-1, 2-2 on up to 10-10, makes this a little more interesting.

Actually maybe we should not view it as that surprising. Assuming that each game has a 50% chance of the Cubs winning and each game is independent, the likelihood of them doing this is 1 in 1024. There have been somewhere over 2300 individual-team baseball seasons, so we might have expected someone to do this. Of course most teams in history had either a greater than or less than 50% probability of winning each game, so that probably explains it.

What if a College Football Playoff looked like this Year’s College Basketball Playoff?

From the Wall Street Journal (H/T).

Projected 2011 NCAA Basketball Field

As I did last year, I tried to come up with what my projection would be for the NCAA field if it was 96 teams instead of 68. One assumption I make is that they will take no losing teams. Last year this was a strong assumption, but this year it probably would not have made a difference. I will assume that all of the at-large NIT teams would have made it, plus Missouri St. Since there were 13 automatic bids for the NIT that still leaves eight additional spots to come up with. Wisconsin-Milwaukee was an automatic bid and a five-seed, while Harvard was an at-large and a six-seed. However, making Milwaukee a five-seed meant that they were playing Northwestern which means a lot less travel. I will thus not assume that they would have been selected (see below).

My final eight in order of selection:

Marshall: should be in

Maryland: should be in

Southern Miss: should be in

Minnesota: overall ok record but finished the year 1-9

College of Charleston: good RPI, good record and won regular season conference title

Hofstra: worse RPI than CAA-mate Drexel, but finished higher in conference

Wisconsin-Milwaukee: a UAB-type pick, regular season champion from a highly-rated conference (at least at the 96-team level). The high NIT seed is indicative of strong assessments of this team.

Baylor: Not a good record but from a big-time conference

Last 4 out: Central Florida, Drexel, Iona and Mississippi St.

Next 4 out: Valparaiso, JMU, Kent St. and Tulsa