Sunday, April 19, 2009

NLL season prediction results

The 2009 NLL regular season has come to a close, so it's time to look at the predictions I made at the beginning of the season and see how I did.

  Result My predictions
East    
1 New York Buffalo
2 Buffalo Philly
3 Boston New York
4 Rochester Toronto
5 Philly Rochester
6 Toronto Boston
West    
1 Calgary Minnesota
2 Portland Calgary
3 San Jose Colorado
4 Colorado San Jose
5 Minnesota Portland
6 Edmonton Edmonton

End result: one correct out of twelve. Ouch. But really, you could argue that I wasn't that far off. Five teams – Buffalo, Rochester, Calgary, Colorado, and San Jose – were all off by only one. As with my mid-season predictions, if you make two swaps my predictions are very close. Swap Philly and Boston (who predicted that they would finish tied for first?) and four teams miss by one and the other two miss by two. In the west, swap Minnesota and Portland and I get four off-by-one's and two correct.

I have a copy of Inside Lacrosse magazine from the beginning of the season, and Brian Shanahan made his picks as well, so let's see how he did:

  Result Brian Shanahan
East    
1 New York Buffalo
2 Buffalo Rochester
3 Boston Toronto
4 Rochester Philly
5 Philly New York
6 Toronto Boston
West    
1 Calgary Minnesota
2 Portland San Jose
3 San Jose Colorado
4 Colorado Edmonton
5 Minnesota Calgary
6 Edmonton Portland

Turns out that Shanny's ouch is worse than mine. None right and only four off by one. The best you can do with two swaps would be New York and Rochester in the east, giving him four off-by-ones and the other two off by three. In the west, you could swap Minnesota and Calgary and get two right, and you'd still have two off by one, but then Edmonton is off by two and Portland by four.

Shanny was more confident about Rochester and Toronto than I was and like me, he thought Minnesota would fare better than they did. But how he got Edmonton finishing ahead of Calgary I don't know. In fairness, Shanny's predictions were made before Chicago folded (he had them finishing 6th in the East, between New York and Boston) and therefore before Anthony Cosmo joined the Blazers. They were also made before Paul Gait was hired as Rochester head coach, and before it was announced that the Knighthawks would be missing Shawn Evans for the season.

Maybe Shanny should start reading my blog, instead of me reading his. <grin>

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