Gregory Campbell & Referees

After reading a little bit about the mess Colin Campbell put himself in. I couldn't help but wonder a few things:

- Did Dean Warren know Colin was out to get him when he refereed Campbell's son's game?

- How many other times has Colin asked Stephen to discuss a call about his son with the referee who called it?

- Do the referees think that these calls could impact their employment/advancement?

- Are there other player's that result in similar concerns from Colin?

With that said, I compiled a quick list of the number of games that referees were involved in with Gregory Campbell (GP) and the number of calls against Gregory Campbell in those games. (ERR = 2 standard deviations of the Call%).

There's a little more variation in these results than would be expected, especially since these results should be less variable (due to the fact the NHL uses 2 refs and they are randomly matched). I don't really want to say more than that, but interestingly, Stephen has 0 calls against Greg. Kerry and Dean have the most and they're gone (although I don't think that Kerry's retirement had anything to do with Colin's son).

In the AHL Gregory averaged 1.37 Penalty minutes per game, in the NHL he's averaged 0.92. Although I believe it is common to have fewer penalties in the NHL compared to the AHL.

Update: Sorry, I just loved this exchange on TSN:

Duthie: But, do you believe the emails to former referee-in-chief Stephen Walkom were inappropriate?

Campbell: No they weren't inappropriate...

...

Campbell: Well, it is inappropriate.

New Jersey

Updated Prediction Model

I've done quite a bit of work on my prediction algorithm's and I am extremely happy with the results: With less than dozen games per team so far, I have a pretty good idea of the probabilities of a team making the playoffs. Although my model is designed to predict individual games and not outcomes over the course of a season it seems to do a reasonable job at doing so anyway.

Results

I used my algorithm to review the 2009 - 2010 results and grouped teams into 3 categories:

Top 10, Middle 10 and Bottom 10 after 154 games were played.

Top 10: 8.4 teams in this group were expected to be in the playoffs, 8 made it (Dallas & NYR didn't make it)

Middle 10: 6.1 were expected to make the playoffs in this group. 5 actually did.

Bottom 10: 1.5 were expected to make the playoffs in this group. 3 made it: Detroit 35%, Boston 32%, Nashville 7%.

Overall these results suggest that my model does not differ significantly from the true results (although my model is based on 4 seasons, which include last season)

My model says they have a 3% chance of making the playoffs

And on that note I can say with a bit of confidence that: New Jersey is probably not going to be in the playoffs (namely, they are statistically out of the playoffs at this point). Right now their win percentage is 23%. They're Pythagorean percentage sits at 18% (GF^2/(GF^2 + GA^2). I should mention, they have been a little unlucky in the neighborhood of -15 GF. Including these goals in their totals would only improve their winning percentage to 41%. Now with the injury to Parise they have an up hill battle for the rest of the season.