Zach Parise To Be Acquired By The Toronto Maple Leafs?

Zach Parise will become an unrestricted free agent in 2012 after signing a one year deal for $6 million with the Devils. If they are unable to lock him up to a long term extension, you can bet that Leaf GM Brian Burke will do everything he can to acquire this player. If New Jersey has a poor first half and Parise goes onto the trading block, expect Burke to make a significant offer. However, if the Devils decide to sell Parise, the price will be expensive as he's 27 years old and hitting his prime years. Many teams will be competing for his services, hence why I don't think he'll sign long term in Jersey. Martin Brodeur's career can't continue forever, and this team's dynasty years are certainly in the rear view mirror. The question at this point for other teams is whether or not you offer a big package for Parise, or wait until July 2012 and not have to sell a load of prospects.

ESPN's Hockey Today speculated that Minnesota is going to offer Zach a monster contract and no mention was made about the Leafs, but my friend the Leaf fan insists otherwise. Why would Parise play in his home state of Minnesota when he could be a Toronto Maple Leaf? Every player wants to be a Toronto Maple Leaf, that's why all hockey players are born, to service the hopes and dreams of ambitious Leaf fans....

NFL Change In Fantasy Points By Position

What are the rates of decline for players at the different offensive positions in 2010 compared to 2009? Instead of measuring it by each individual category, the charts below are based solely on Fantasy PTS (ESPN standard scoring). It is very clear that running backs decline faster and sooner than quarterbacks and wide receivers. RBs show faster and more dramatic rates of improvement in their first 3 seasons, where QBs on average don't much decline until after 100 career games. WRs have the slowest rate of decline of all the positions, due largely to being involved in far fewer collisions.

Jannik Hansen Locked Up For 3 Years

The Vancouver Canucks made a fantastic signing today, locking up one of their most under-appreciated players to a 3 year $4 million dollar contract. $1.3M per season for the next 3 years is a bargain for the feisty forechecker who played a key role in Vancouver's run to the Stanley Cup final. He may only have 65 PTS in 189 career games played, but he is one of the best defensive players in the league, very effective on the penalty kill. He was on the ice for an even strength goal against for every 35.68 minutes of ES ice time, which at 45 seconds per shift means he is scored on roughly once every 47 shifts (even strength). That puts him near the best in the league for that metric. He had 9 PTS in 25 playoff games while logging 16 valuable minutes per game.

Well done Mike Gillis. The Sturm contract was a bad decision, and the Ballard trade was one of the worst of the year. But this Hansen contract is something that Canucks fans can get excited about. I had him valued at $1.8M for his arbitration hearing (which now won't happen) based on market comparables, and getting him for $500K less is great for the team.

Brett Favre 2011 Comeback

Somebody needs to encourage Brett Favre to return to the NFL for at least one more season instead of retiring, so let me be the first. The NFL is a better place with Favre in it, and I want him to play at least 3 more years. Prove that the drama of the last few seasons was about more than just extending the consecutive games streak (which Peyton Manning has in his sights), but rather love of the game. Favre at his age is still more effective than half the QBs in the NFL, and his enthusiasm for the game is unmatched. He might not lead the Vikings to the Super Bowl, or any team to the Super Bowl for that matter, but how much better are the Arizona Cardinals with this sure fire hall of famer? Somehow I doubt that Brett would even be willing to come back and play on a shitty team, but it would be inspirational.

I don't even care that he texts pictures of his "junk" to team employees, I'm still a Favre fan. He just loves football that much...

*disclaimer* I may or may not have been emotionally traumatized when Barry Sanders retired just shy of the all-time rushing record.

Flaw In ESPN NFL Game By Game Projected Player Points

Last year I played in an ESPN Fantasy football league, and too frequently relied on their week by week projected points to set my line-up. As a mathematician it did not take me long to notice the statistical flaw in ESPN's weekly projections, and that it was all about touchdowns. They do not include fractional points for expected touchdowns, making it either a 1 or a 0 (in some rare cases 2). I have heard on the ESPN Fantasy Focus Football podcast that this is done because "you can't score half a touchdown", but in the wonderful world of statistical "expected value" you absolutely can score half a touchdown. If a player has a 50% of scoring 1 TD, then his expected TDs should be 0.5 not 0.

Winning in Fantasy football is all about scoring TDs, as the team with the most TDs will more often than not win their week. By doing it this way ESPN's statisticians are creating an artificially large gap between players expected to score 1 TD and 0 TDs. For example, if you used 50% probability as the dividing line between 1 and 0; and player 1 has a 49% chance of scoring a TD and player 2 has a 51% chance of scoring 1 TD, the gap in ESPN expected points would be 6 (holding other stats constant). In reality, player 1 should have an expected value of 2.9 and player 2 should have an expected value of 3.1, instead of 0 and 6. By rounding to the nearest touchdown they are skewing the actual expected value. That's fine when projecting results for a full 16 game schedule, but on a game by game basis  (where 95% of players true expected TDs is less than 1) you will get a far higher margin of error than if you used fractional TDs.

Fantasy football is a game of inches that can't always be measured in yards. I'd like to be able to use ESPN projections instead of having to check Yahoo rankings before setting my ESPN line-up.

NFL Running Back Production By Years Of Experience

What exactly is the optimal years of experience for an NFL running back from a statistical standpoint? Based on the 2010 season, 3rd year running backs appear to be running away with that distinction, scoring 137 touchdowns (receiving TDs included). 2nd year backs scored 62 TDs, while 4th year backs scored 41 TDs. 3rd year backs totaled 21,365 total yards (rushing and receiving) while 4th year backs had only 7,284. It is possible that there was just an anomalously enormously talented draft class in 2008, and a different analysis is required to measure actual year over year declines in production based on years of experience. Is it just an anomaly, or are 3rd year backs the peak of production? When you look at the data and graph below, that surely looks too significant to be anomalous. Note that I did include QBs in my rushing data set, which only has a minimal effect on the statistics.

There was no correlation between career games played and change in yards per rushing attempt, and there was a much stronger relationship between declining rushing attempts per game and career games played. Ergo: number of carries declines more reliably that yards per carry. The point where carries per game began to decline (ie where the slope of the regression line intersects the X-axis) was after 61 career games played. 61 divided by 16 games per season is 3.8. Typically carries begin to decline in year 4, unless the back spent all or part of his first 3 years sitting on the bench waiting for a chance to play significant downs.

Heads up: Players entering 3rd season, Arian Foster, LeSean McCoy, Knowshon Moreno, Shonn Greene
Warning: Players entering 4th season, Chris Johnson, Ray Rice, Rashard Mendenhall, Matt Forte

	NFL Running Backs 2010
years	touches	yards	TDs
1	1367	6364	41
2	2096	11049	62
3	4188	21365	137
4	1569	7284	41
5	976	4507	23
6	1427	6577	37
7	951	4271	24
8	140	597	7
9	446	1869	15
10	536	2483	13
11	283	1244	6

Alexei Yashin Coming Back To America?

When Alexei Yashin's contract was bought out in 2007 and the player returned home to play in Russia, I honestly thought we'd seen the last of Yashin (international play notwithstanding). Now rumours are that he's negotiating a possible return to the NHL and the two teams rumoured to be interested are the Islanders and Senators!? What? The two teams who have the most reason not to want Alexei Yashin are reportedly the two teams trying to acquire him? This was the player who essentially ended Mike Milbury's career as a General Manager (though Al might have done the NYI a favour on that front). Just how much is the 37 year old Yashin worth? Looking at comparables in age and offense, his value would be in the $2M to $3M range. Anything north of $3M is too much. If I were a GM in the NHL, I'd make him an offer of 1 year $2M, but not a penny more. Though I'd rather have Brendan Morrison at $1.25M or Todd Bertuzzi at $1.9M than Yashin at $2M.

What has Alexei been up to the last 4 years?

                                                           GP  G A PTS

2007-08	Yaroslavl Lokomotiv	Russia	56	16	27	43
2008-09	Yaroslavl Lokomotiv	KHL	56	21	26	47
2009-10	St. Petersburg SKA	KHL	56	18	46	64
2010-11	St. Petersburg SKA	KHL	52	15	18	33