Standing Room.

The problem with standings in this league is that they only tell part of the story - only the total number of points accumulated at a given moment in time. Its the way most people measure their progress against other GMs, but its a shitty measure of overall team performance, as teams have not played the same number of games. Present point totals only account for a single slice in time, but a better evaluation of performance requires us to look to past patterns and future estimates. Our pool gives us some handy tools to do just that.

Man-Games Remaining
In terms of the future, the Carmada and my Flyers have 823 and 822 estimated games remaining, compared with the Fylander's 803. 20 points is actually the lowest spread I have seen. Naturally the spread varies from day to day - I have seen it as high as 35 man-games.

It appears that our pool assumes that goalies will play every single game and treats days off the same as games missed due to injury - as a "Man-Game Missed". In that respect, teams with clear-cut, workhorse starting goaltenders have a man-game advantage, the true value of which can only be determined at the end of the year.

In any event, it is an important measure in determining what room you have to play "catch-up" on your opponents and is indicative of how artificially low or high your current standing is.

Man-Games Played
Man-Games Played are a different measure than Man-Games Remaining since they are backward-looking. Currently, Micah has the fewest games played, while the Preydators have the most. Fy has the second most Man-Games-Played, which, coupled with the fewest Man-Games-Remaining, suggests that his current 3rd place point total is inflated by a temporary scheduling advantage.

Man-Games Played is interesting, but it is most helpful as the basis for the best tool we have at our disposal to evaluate our teams...

Point-Per-Game
In light of the man-games remaining problem, the ranking you get when you sort by point per game is, in my view, a far superior indicator of overall team performance to date. Its still pretty early in the season and while a couple shutouts or Pierre Mcguire MONSTER PERFORMANCES™ can cause some significant changes, we are more than a quarter of the way into the season and starting to settle into some scoring patterns. Teams with a lot of slow starts might move up, or injuries might push a team down, but we aren't likely to see a 0.75 PPG team drop to below the Roos' 0.63 (or Roos to climb to 0.80 PPG, for that matter - hey Roos, looking to dump anyone on your roster yet? Email me).

In that respect, PPG is a far better metric than current point totals since it erases benefit of the total number of games played in terms of past performance, and insofar as past performance is predictive of future performance, it helps us in estimating our year-end totals.

In terms of actual point production, the Manitoba Roos is still the worst team in the league - but there are some surprises. Illustrating the benefit of a 20 man-game lead over the Carmada, the 3rd place Fylanders are actually the 3rd-worst point-producing team, sitting 13th place in terms of point-per-game production. Conversely, the 7th place Carmada has the best point production overall.

Another example is the 0.75 PPG production of my 12th place team, tied with the 13th place Dicklas Lidstroms. Dickie and I are both tied with the 2nd place Calgary Wittmen. In my view, the PPG standings suggest that the Dicklas Lidstroms and my Flyers are artificially low in the standings while the Wittmen are artificially high.

In any event, none of these are perfect measurements but are all better than the raw point totals. When you look at your position in the standings (and despair or rejoice, depending), click the "Man Games" tab to get a better sense of how you actually stack up against the competition.