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>