Good for Judson. He deserves it.

I've been mulling something in my head the last hour or so, and I figured I might as well put it into a post for math-checking and whatnot. Now you may not know it from my silly cartoons or lazy blogging, but back in my college days I was an economics major, studying things like incentives, indifference curves, and game theory. And I guess it's from all that line of thinking that I started wondering today about the financial repercussions of an imbalanced-conference NHL realignment scheme.

Now I know that idea has been killed for the upcoming season, but there's certainly some likelihood it will appear in the future. What will that mean in terms of each team's (east or west) expected revenues, specifically as it pertains to playoffs? After all, it seems reasonable that both conferences pull in about the same playoff money -- what would it mean to have that distributed among a differing number of teams? To think through this, I did some napkin math to illustrate:

Currently, the eastern and western conferences each have 15 teams, and 8 make the postseason from each -- every team has a theoretical 53% chance of making the playoffs, regardless of conference. Once in the playoffs, there are 15 total rounds that consist of an average of 5.5 games each (I'm kind of guessing), and each playoff game brings in $2 million (I'm REALLY guessing). For illustrative purposes, that's $165M that all 30 teams have an equal chance at getting at -- each team in theory has an expected postseason payout of $5.5M annually (though obviously that gets distributed quite unevenly depending on each team's success).

But what if the NHL did go to uneven conferences -- what if there were 16 western teams and 14 eastern teams, with still 8 making the playoffs from each conference? How does that change teams' expected playoff payouts, and how can this new inequality be balanced?

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I guess after my public reply to a previous e-mail, everybody with millions of dollars to give away has decided to contact me.

Life is good.

Today's message comes from a man known as "Mr.Peter CHANG Lee." I don't know why "CHANG" is in all-caps. I assume that's how they do things in Hong Kong.

I have bolded certain parts of the e-mail which I consider to be especially important.

Greetings,

My sincere apologies if this letter causes any form of Irritation or embarrassment or,i would want to demand a high level of maturity from you while reading this letter.

"A high level of maturity"? Well then I'm your man.

I got your reference in my search for someone who suits my proposed business relationship.

Yeah Isabella Carmel is probably telling all her millionaire business friends about me. Do you see how it works, people? You do something nice for someone else and you get rewarded for it. That's what the Buddhists call "Karmel."

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Anaheim Ducks (Pacific West) at Dallas Stars (Pacific East), 5:30 pm
Anaheim Calling and Defending Big D -- two teams with 100% White House attendance.

I tried to sketch some Ducks-Stars stuff today, but nothing really panned out. But here -- I'm posting it anyways!

Prediction: I'll be around for game comments tonight -- stop on by! As for the game itself, it's kind of fascinating to me that the Ducks have yet to win an overtime or shootout decision on North American soil this season, so let's say that happens.

Go Break. :)

This post isn't going to have a lot to do with hockey. It's much more important than that.

For today's gameday I would like to take the time to publicly reply to a very interesting e-mail I received recently.

Subject: YOUR ARE CHOSEN BY GOD.

This is really exciting you guys.

I've never won anything before in my whole life (obviously, I'm a Sharks fan) but now out of nowhere I've apparently been noticed by GOD! He must have read my article about Winnipeg. That was really popular.

The only part about this line that worries me is that it says "YOUR ARE CHOSEN BY GOD." What exactly of mine has been chosen by God? This is important. If it's my shoes or something I guess he can have those but I'm not letting him near my PS3.

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Tim Thomas isn't the only hockey player with unpopular beliefs. Let's take a look at the controversial opinions of some of hockey's biggest stars:

-Steven Stamkos refuses to say "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance because he's not quite ready to rule out Quetzacoatl.

-Joe Thornton believes the State Animal of California should be the wooly mammoth. He also believes the State Flower, State Mineral and State Name should be changed to wooly mammoth.

-Anze Kopitar really misses the Kings Castle.

-Joffrey Lupul thinks that it is sometimes appropriate to commit a crime, like shoplifting to feed your family or rape if you're bored.

-Ryan Getzlaf plans on raising his kids in the "Greek tradition."

Pavel Datsyuk believes it is perfectly acceptable for the female to decapitate the male after copulation.

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Is it bad that I'm looking forward to not having to watch the Kings for 8 days after tonight?

Prediction: Kings win, 0-00. What should I do during the break? Maybe I'll learn how to sew. Is it weird that "sew" is pronounced with a hard "O" but "sow" is pronounced like it has an "A" in it to anyone else but me?