TEG & Week Four's Schedule

Three Goal Minimum Part of the hard part in keeping up with a weekly column has been TEG's difficulty in finding the new trends that tend to win games. Ever since the league has started back up, games have been shorter, making both scoring and shooting down. TEG's old immutable laws dictated scoring four goals and getting 20 shots on goal would win a game. But with lower scoring came closer games, asTEG predicted they would have to be at the end of Season Five:

To date, there have been 78 games all-time decided by one goal. To date, only two of them have occurred this season (coincidentally enough, both involved Kevin). That's it: two. The fans are going to be turning away pretty soon if this lack of suspense continues.

In the last two season alone, there were 48 one goal games in the regular season to those 71 in the first five seasons. So TEG simply figured that winning the close games would separate one from the pack.

But finally giving the last few seasons a closer look, TEG's immutable laws are not only being followed more frequently than he had thought, a little tweaking to them gives them an updated clarity.

Old Law: Score four goals and win.
Supporting Stats: Teams with four goals or more went 163-29 (.849), accounting for 82.3% of the victories.
Current Support: Teams in the three seasons since starting again and expanding, have continued--and even bettered--this trend going 77-4 (.951) when scoring four goals. In fact, only one team has lost having scored four goals this year: your's truly. However, those wins only account for 48.7% of the victories. Thus, the Law suddenly applied to 1/3 less of the games.

New Law: Score three goals and win.
Old Stats: Through the first five seasons, teams scoring three goals or more were 192-85 (.693), thus making it a rather successful rule, but not nearly as successful as that all-important fourth goal.
Current Support: Since expansion, teams have gone 130-26 (.833) when scoring three goals or more. This is not only nearly identical with the winning percentage of the Old Law, but also accounts for exactly the same 82.3% of victories, thus making it a little more frequent and universal once again. TEG says: usher in the new law!


Old Law: Shoot 20 times and win.
Old Support: Teams went 44-14 (.759) when getting more than 20 SOG in the first five seasons. Though this rule was satisfied only 14.6% of the time, it was a notable enough of a landmark to warrant TEG's attention.
Current Support: Teams since have gone 9-2 with 20 SOG, but only making up 5.7% of the games in which this landmark was reached. Thus, while successful, it has grown to be a little too specific.

New Law: Shoot 10 times and win.
Old Support: Teams went 174-121 (.590) and reached the mark 74.5% of the time in the first five seasons.
Current Support: Teams have since gone 96-45 (.681). This not only bumps the victory total up nearly 10%, but also accounts for 44.6% making it not too general of a mark to satisfy, but frequent and successful enough to mark it as a notable achievement. TEG says: usher in the new law!

(TEG notes: it is 6:30AM so I may not be quite as level headed as needed in hopes of attaining clarity there. But do your best. For me.)

Stats of the Week:
1. After a 1-2 start, Chris 2.0 has gone 5-1 and holds the tie-breaker for first place.
2. After a 1-2 start, Colin has gone 4-1, holds the possible tie-breaker over Chris 2.0 with a game in hand.
3. After a 1-4 start, Justin has gone 3-1.
4. After winning his first three one-goal games, Joe has since lost three one-goal games in a row.
5. Khris is first in GF and second in GA (with a game in hand to Colin's first place total).
6. Despite outshooting Church Nate 17-3 and losing, Pat is nevertheless 3-1 when having 10 SOG or more (and the inspiration for the paragraphs above).
7. Todd had not allowed five goals in one regular season game since the first week of Season Six. Then he went three straight games over the past two week in which he did so.
8. Church Nate won two games in the same week for the first time in franchise history in setting his career high in wins in a season this past week.
9. Church Nate has scored three goals in two of his wins this year and has won five of his all-time six games in a similar fashion.
10. Church Nate's 1-0 victory over Dan this week marked only the second time that score has ever happened in the now 356 regular season games.
11. When Colin shutout Justin this week, it once again left Kevin as the only player to have never been shutout in regular season play.

(and, finally, a couple of stats involving nait and Dan:)
12. Dan is the only team to have allowed 20 SOG or more twice in a game this season, losing both games.
13. nait is the only team to have attempted 20 SOG or more twice in a game this season, winning all three games.
14. Chief is the only team to have both allowed and attempted 20 SOG in a game this season, having lost the former and won the latter this past week.

And finally, this week's schedule (subject to change, of course, depending upon times of arrival):

Todd	at	Colin
Church Nate	at	Khris
nait	at	Dan
Colin	at	Chris 2.0
Joe	at	Todd
Chief	at	Justin
Khris	at	nait
Pat	at	Chief
Colin	at	Justin
Joe	at	nait
Chris 2.0	at	Pat
Justin	at	Church Nate
Dan	at	Khris
Joe	at	Chief
Pat	at	Colin
Chris 2.0	at	Todd

Season Eight, Week Three Standings & Stats

Standings	W	L	GF	GA	Home		Away
Chris 2.0	6	3	28	22	4	1	2	2
Joe	6	3	24	19	4	2	2	1
Khris	6	3	30	17	3	1	3	2
Colin	5	3	21	15	3	1	2	2
Chief	5	4	27	19	3	1	2	3
Justin	4	5	24	26	2	2	2	3
Todd	4	5	24	26	3	1	1	4
nait	4	5	28	29	3	1	1	4
Pat	4	5	19	23	3	2	1	3
Church Nate	3	7	12	28	1	4	2	3
Dan	3	7	20	33	2	3	1	4
	50	50	257	257	31	19	19	31

tiebreakers: Chris 2.0 (2-0), Joe (1-1), Khris (0-2) versus each other; Justin (3-1), Todd (2-2), nait (1-2, beat Pat); Pat (1-2) versus each others; Knate beat Dan.

	G	SOG	SH%	GA	SOGA	SV	SV %
Chris 2.0	28	89	31.5%	22	104	82	0.788
Joe	24	95	25.3%	19	93	74	0.796
Khris	30	83	36.1%	17	62	45	0.726
Colin	21	76	27.6%	15	81	66	0.815
Chief	27	73	37.0%	19	90	71	0.789
Justin	24	113	21.2%	26	87	61	0.701
Todd	24	83	28.9%	26	77	51	0.662
nait	28	138	20.3%	29	87	58	0.667
Pat	19	81	23.5%	23	61	38	0.623
Church Nate	12	43	27.9%	28	95	67	0.705
Dan	20	76	26.3%	33	113	80	0.708
	167	586	28.5%	167	586	419	0.715

TEG comes clean

TEG can't lie.

Well, that's a lie. But TEG loves statements that inherently deny themselves. But that's beside the point.

The point here being that between the shitty Red right winger, the computer going bezerk last week, the general shittiness of the blue center--fuck, the overall shittiness of the entire table--the slower play that wins but goes in direct contrast to TEG's own style, and the fact that TEG's giving that fuckface Frizzy his money every week, well Bubble Hockey Thursdays haven't been supplying quite the same amount of inspiration they used to to give TEG to write "a TEG" every week.

And TEG hasn't even mentioned how much he hates The Pass.

(Let alone even considered the possibility that I just plain suck now at something I used to be good at and am a terribly sore loser. That's why I didn't mention The Pass. You give some and you take some. Or something like that.)

But something about last week gave me the needed burst to look forward to it again. It might have been our own little corner, or the great 3-2 game between Joe and Chris 2.0, or the fact that Todd lost two games, or just the realization that the league's at a point where everybody has a chance to win, or lose, every game they play.

I--TEG has blown his third person cover--honestly started the league knowing I'd probably have a good chance to win at the start with the secret hope that it would bring out our collective competitive natures to the point that the league would turn into a game-to-game struggle as to who would win. Coming off of last season's finals--which TEG couldn't possibly, without any honest accuracy anyway, describe just how entertaining they were or just how nice it was to see scores that harkened back to when the games were longer and the table was in better shape--and now seeing Colin 1-2 after his perfect season; Joe and Justin switching places in the standings; Khris coming off a 1-11 season to now be 5-2 and in 2nd place; and Church Nate finally beating me after playing so closely in most of our first eight matchups (and did I mention that Todd also lost two games?), that vision of parity has come. I should be enjoying the fact that every game is a toss up. That I have to bring my A-game every time and so does everyone else. This should be the fun of it: hanging out, playing games, and drinking beers together. If that's not a good time, what is?

Of course, this all sounds good on paper, or on the screen, and in theory. Though in practice I might just be the same old sore loser who wishes he could be looking back at the pack instead of viewing it from within and can't write about it unless winning all of the time.

But if I admit that, I get to blow up on The Pass. So for now, I'll spare us each of that.

As for now, I'll at least try to give a paragraph or two each week with at least a few stats of the week. If the games inspire me to do more--and I don't just mean if I win 'em all--I'll gladly do so.

Stats of the Week:
1. Joe went 5-7 last season, but is now 5-1.
2. Justin went 10-2 last season, but is now 1-4.
3. Khris went 1-11 last season, but is now 5-2.
4. Todd went 11-1 last season, but is now 3-3.
5. Pat went 0-6 at home last season, but is now 2-1.
6. Khris scored 23 goals all of last season. He now leads the league with 26.
7. The last time Todd lost two games in one week was the last week of Season Five.
8. Chris 2.0 easily broke his old record of 14 SOG in one game when he had 23 against Joe this week.
9. Neither Chief nor Church Nate have registered at least 10 SOG in one game this season.
10. Joe is 5-1 but has only played one road game. Chief is 3-3 but has only played one home game.
11. Joe is 3-1 in one goal games however, and 2-0 in two goal games. As much as being home helps, winning close games is just as important in the league these days.
12. Church Nate has been shutout three times this season and held to only one goal twice. But he scored the three he needed to beat nait for the first time in franchise history.
13. TEG couldn't come up with any interesting stats to mention himself or Dan. Now sitting in the middle of the pack after so many seasons makes that somewhat difficult.