Anaheim Ducks (32-13-8, 3rd in west) at San Jose Sharks (34-18-1, 4th in west)
Well, here it is—a home-and-home today-and-tomorrow with the top two teams in the Pacific, and going in the Sharks have only 3 less standings points (69) than the hot-and-cold Ducks (72).
I don’t have much to offer number-wise for this game (yay, red wine!), but I would like to point out how difficult it is to even think about the standings even just two games into the future, with overtime and shootout results being possible. For example, there are ten (!) possible point outcomes to these two games, not even counting permutations:

Psst, Mark Bell, I saved you a parking spot, dude.
Prediction: Ducks 3, Sharks 1. Pahlsson, Selanne, and Pronger.
Well, here it is—a home-and-home today-and-tomorrow with the top two teams in the Pacific, and going in the Sharks have only 3 less standings points (69) than the hot-and-cold Ducks (72).
I don’t have much to offer number-wise for this game (yay, red wine!), but I would like to point out how difficult it is to even think about the standings even just two games into the future, with overtime and shootout results being possible. For example, there are ten (!) possible point outcomes to these two games, not even counting permutations:
- Sharks get 4 points, Ducks get 0.
- Sharks get 4 points, Ducks get 1.
- Sharks get 4 points, Ducks get 2.
- Sharks get 3 points, Ducks get 2.
- Sharks get 3 points, Ducks get 3.
- Sharks get 2 points, Ducks get 2.
- Sharks get 2 points, Ducks get 3.
- Sharks get 2 points, Ducks get 4.
- Sharks get 1 point, Ducks get 4.
- Sharks get 0 points, Ducks get 4.
With the first 2 of these 10 outcomes, San Jose would take the Pacific division lead. Otherwise, Anaheim holds it.
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If you haven't noticed, this blog was moved to Blogger 2.0 recently. A few notes on that:
a) Though I generally managed (crappy) maintenance of this blog, I didn't make the decision to upgrade (though I don't mind it much either). The one time I investigated the option, Blogger told me that I wan't the "owner" of the blog, so I generally suspect that this upgrade was the work of James Mirtle (who set us up); plus the conversion of his site times well with BoC's. Thanks, JM.
b) Generally, I'm generally indifferent to 2.0, except for two nice features: First off, I was never any good at making the sidebar and body of the blog fit well on different screen resolutions; this appears to be auto-fixed in the upgraded version (so far as I know). Secondly, there is a categorization function in 2.0 that is pretty cool; if you scroll down on the left sidebar you can check it out. I've gone back and tagged almost all of our archives (yay manageable post total!), so you can go check out all the posts that pertain to karma, or grammar, or whatever you'd like.
c) Does anyone else find that they have to log in with much more frequency on Blogger 2.0? That is made doubly obnoxious by forcing me to log in with my e-mail address rather than my (shorter) blogger account name each time.
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If you haven't noticed, this blog was moved to Blogger 2.0 recently. A few notes on that:
a) Though I generally managed (crappy) maintenance of this blog, I didn't make the decision to upgrade (though I don't mind it much either). The one time I investigated the option, Blogger told me that I wan't the "owner" of the blog, so I generally suspect that this upgrade was the work of James Mirtle (who set us up); plus the conversion of his site times well with BoC's. Thanks, JM.
b) Generally, I'm generally indifferent to 2.0, except for two nice features: First off, I was never any good at making the sidebar and body of the blog fit well on different screen resolutions; this appears to be auto-fixed in the upgraded version (so far as I know). Secondly, there is a categorization function in 2.0 that is pretty cool; if you scroll down on the left sidebar you can check it out. I've gone back and tagged almost all of our archives (yay manageable post total!), so you can go check out all the posts that pertain to karma, or grammar, or whatever you'd like.
c) Does anyone else find that they have to log in with much more frequency on Blogger 2.0? That is made doubly obnoxious by forcing me to log in with my e-mail address rather than my (shorter) blogger account name each time.

Psst, Mark Bell, I saved you a parking spot, dude.
Prediction: Ducks 3, Sharks 1. Pahlsson, Selanne, and Pronger.