[Article] Conspiracy Theories

[bd71]

Cheech is one of the most relatable guy in the sports world.

Love having him on our team - what he says here is simple and true.

Take a note crypt keeper et al.

If you were here right now Cheech, I'd make you a kick ass tray of nachos, Dubliner and Balderson's 5 year old, peppers, red onions, artichoke hearts, kalamatas, and some homemade guac.

I like John Garrett but this is still bush. I hate how media types in Vancouver whine and cheer for their team. It's just gross.

Really? A colour commentator and a columnist are seriously complaining that the Canucks are being pushed down by the man? That it's a "conspiracy"? If that were true it would be one heck of a story! Might even win the person who breaks it some awards but all this whining and speculating just bolsters belief that the Canucks and their fans/media are just constant complainers.

[5Fivehole0]

I like John Garrett but this is still bush. I hate how media types in Vancouver whine and cheer for their team. It's just gross.

Really? A colour commentator and a columnist are seriously complaining that the Canucks are being pushed down by the man? That it's a "conspiracy"? If that were true it would be one heck of a story! Might even win the person who breaks it some awards but all this whining and speculating just bolsters belief that the Canucks and their fans/media are just constant complainers.

My issue with crap posts, and yes I mean that, is people are so blinded and sucked into the fact that they think nobody is out to make a buck and that because it's professional, there is no corruption.

Newsflash, people are greedy, and yes if you left 100 dollars on the table, most of us would return it to you,.. But if you left 50,000 dollars behind, I guarantee that you would never see that money again. Money is the root of all evil, it's not just a saying...

Why is it so far fetched that the refs get payed off to help another team win or to ensure an American team in a struggling market gets the cup?

Fact

Before winning the Cup Chicago had a diminishing fan base, they win the cup and BOOM the fans are back.

Fact

Pittsburgh was on the verge of losing their team... Pittsburgh wins the lottery, drafts Crosby, wins the cup. Boom, fans flock to see the penguins (dat pun tho)

Fact

California teams were not very popular and were hemorrhaging fans because they were mediocre teams. LA wins the cup, everyone down there jumps on the bandwagon...

San Jose is dominating

Anahiem has looked pretty good

Ticket sales are on the rise

Note, that not once did I say anything was rigged..

But do I have to?

Coincidences are rare, keep that in mind.

[Kinvadren]

Absolutely agree with the conspiracy theory. It is unheard of for a team to have this much puck posession and be getting so few power plays. Blatant obvious penalties are simply not being called.

The Canucks have had the fewest Power Plays of any other team in the entire NHL this year. We are averaging I think around 2.5 a game, though for the last number of games it's more like 1.5 or less. The average in the NHL is 3.5 power plays per game. San Jose Sharks have an average of 5.5. We are clearly the lowest. Even the other "bottom of the list" teams for Power Play Opportunities are usually getting 3 Power Plays a game. We are way under that! Check the Team Stats on NHL.com. It's unbelievable.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/teamstats.htm?fetchKey=20142ALLSAAAll&sort=advantages&viewName=powerPlay

CANUCKS: 29 Power Plays in 11 games. AVG: 2.6.

4 other lowest Power Play teams this year:

DET: 33 Power plays in 11 games. AVG: 3

OTT: 27 Power Plays in 9 games. AVG: 3

NYR: 22 Power Plays in 7 games. AVG: 3.1

NSH: 33 Power Plays in 10 games. AVG: 3.3

NHL average this year: 3.69 per game.

NHL average not including highest (San Jose) and lowest (Canucks): 3.67

Not ONE team has an average under 3.0 except the Canucks. We're at 2.6.

[Ray_Cathode]

Thank you, Cheech.

What's sad is that our team is labelled a diving team while we've all seen the 'hero' teams out east and in SoCal flop around like fish. This false perception should cease.

And when Henrik says anything, we're a whining team.

At the same time, i don't want this team to rely on the powerplay anymore. Doesn't work. Seen it with the wce powerplay pushoff and the Sedin era. It ultimately fails when you leave it up to the refs.

Wanna really teach the officials a lesson? Score tons of shorthanded goals.

If it was only one or two officials - such as Auger - it would be the officials - when the phenomena is all officials, then there is only one conclusion - it has been instructed from the top. The Director of Officiating is Terry Gregson, who reports to senior VP Colin Campbell:

Here is the goods on Campbell:

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=341367

http://www.torontosun.com/sports/hockey/2010/11/16/16172671.html

Then there is this laffer:

http://www.straight.com/blogra/colin-campbell-gives-vancouver-canucks-hockey-fans-another-great-present-his-resignation

Of course his resignation from league disciplinarian was rewarded with even more power - senior VP to whom officials all have to pay homage. Campbell disgraces himself with his actions and is rewarded by the NHL with more power - one might have to ask why?

But then you'd be a conspiracy theorist!

[Kinvadren]

Another stat that the announcers said during the first period. We're actually averaging 1.8 Power Plays over our last 10 games (I think counting the current game so far). That is less than half the league average of 3.7. (1.8 x 2 = 3.6).

[oldnews]

I like John Garrett but this is still bush. I hate how media types in Vancouver whine and cheer for their team. It's just gross.

Really? A colour commentator and a columnist are seriously complaining that the Canucks are being pushed down by the man? That it's a "conspiracy"? If that were true it would be one heck of a story! Might even win the person who breaks it some awards but all this whining and speculating just bolsters belief that the Canucks and their fans/media are just constant complainers.

I personally couldn't care less about the reputation of a 'fanbase'.

Garrett works for a regional network SNP which services this one, and publishes on Canucks.com - a former Canuck - I have no problem with him being a homer.

Gallagher on the other hand is who the term 'conspiracy theory' is attributed to - imo he's a moron, and hardly a cheerleader for this club (actually for the most part the exact opposite), nor are his peers at the Province or the Sun. But that's ok, because few of us want these halfwits representing.

Conspiracy is a stupid term to use - but it's Gallagher - I'd expect no less. He's about as 'professional' as the NHL officials he is criticizing.

[Hamhuised]

I was looking at those advance stats to see if I could find an explanation anywhere. It seems I might have one, Canucks are getting most of their penalties in the second period. Now the second period is known for the long change, and the long change requires foot speed. Canucks aren't a fast team, we have never been a fast team, I wonder if it relates to energy loss on the change.

If you're not a team that moves the feet, and we aren't that team, we haven't been since Bure days, we aren't going to draw a lot of penalties either.

Now the players should have shut their mouths a long time ago, we're not going to get the benefit of the doubt simply because of location, and our players need to take that into account.

Another thing is the Sedins, they are not the good ol Canadian boys and we aren't the Detroit Red Wings so we have no marketability for the NHL as a whole, it's just a fact of life.

A disabled man who works twice as hard more than the one who whines about getting a raw deal is the one who gets respect, it's a fact of life. We are the disabled team unfortunately shut up and play hard and things will change.

I feel this sums my feelings up. We know we aren't well liked. We know we aren't always going to get the calls. Just keep working at it. And hopefully the refs become accountable one day.

[5Fivehole0]

I personally couldn't care less about the reputation of a 'fanbase'.

Garrett works for a regional network SNP which services this one, and publishes on Canucks.com - a former Canuck - I have no problem with him being a homer.

Gallagher on the other hand is who the term 'conspiracy theory' is attributed to - imo he's a moron, and hardly a cheerleader for this club (actually for the most part the exact opposite), nor are his peers at the Province or the Sun. But that's ok, because few of us want these halfwits representing.

Conspiracy is a stupid term to use - but it's Gallagher - I'd expect no less. He's about as 'professional' as the NHL officials he is criticizing.

And you are who?

Irony

[M A K A V E L I 96]

Garrett was talking about the officiating issues. 5 seconds later Kesler gets tripped, no call. 10 seconds after that Daniel trips a Devil and gets a penalty. Perfect timing.

[5Fivehole0]

Garrett was talking about the officiating issues. 5 seconds later Kesler gets tripped, no call. 10 seconds after that Daniel trips a Devil and gets a penalty. Perfect timing.

Henrik then gets tripped at center and no penalty

[5Fivehole0]

Garrison take a cross check to back... No call

Garrison pushes back in front of the net PENALTY

Coincidence though amirite?

[oldnews]

And you are who?

Irony

My issue with crap posts, and yes I mean that, is people are so blinded and sucked into the fact that they think nobody is out to make a buck and that because it's professional, there is no corruption.

Newsflash, people are greedy, and yes if you left 100 dollars on the table, most of us would return it to you,.. But if you left 50,000 dollars behind, I guarantee that you would never see that money again. Money is the root of all evil, it's not just a saying...

Why is it so far fetched that the refs get payed off to help another team win or to ensure an American team in a struggling market gets the cup?

Fact

Before winning the Cup Chicago had a diminishing fan base, they win the cup and BOOM the fans are back.

Fact

Pittsburgh was on the verge of losing their team... Pittsburgh wins the lottery, drafts Crosby, wins the cup. Boom, fans flock to see the penguins (dat pun tho)

Fact

California teams were not very popular and were hemorrhaging fans because they were mediocre teams. LA wins the cup, everyone down there jumps on the bandwagon...

San Jose is dominating

Anahiem has looked pretty good

Ticket sales are on the rise

Note, that not once did I say anything was rigged..

But do I have to?

Coincidences are rare, keep that in mind.

I'm one of the many who think the officiating in the NHL is biased and unprofessional, but I'm certainly not a fan of Tony Gallagher, and I also think you are making an awfully weak, borderline nutty case here.

Of course attendance rises when teams win. Is that your evidence of a conspiracy?

"People are so blindly sucked into the fact that they think nobody is out to make a buck"... With all due respect, what?....are you talking about?

Sticking to actual powerplay discrepancies and video evidence carries a lot more weight than these "Facts" you cite, which do anything but evidence a "conspiracy".

[5Fivehole0]

I'm one of the many who think the officiating in the NHL is biased and unprofessional, but I'm certainly not a fan of Tony Gallagher, and I also think you are making an awfully weak, borderline nutty case here.

Of course attendance rises when teams win. Is that your evidence of a conspiracy?

"People are so blindly sucked into the fact that they think nobody is out to make a buck"... With all due respect, what?....are you talking about?

Sticking to actual powerplay discrepancies and video evidence carries a lot more weight than these "Facts" you cite, which do anything but evidence a "conspiracy".

People are greedy, welcome to life.

And those "Facts" are facts look them up.

I'm talking about the NHL's politics being as corrupt as real life politics.

You can stay blindfolded that's fine

[CanucksAtHome]

Hi again, I'll try and address some of the issues you all have been raising. I haven't read all the replies since my last post so I apologize if I don't recognize some of the comments.

First of all, it's really hard to do straightforward calculations to come up with a p-value. Any method that does this has inherent flaws in its methodology. It's much more complicated statistically, because of something called multiple comparisons. Traditionally, the p-value at which something is considered 'significant' is one which is lower than 0.05. The smaller the p-value, the more evidence there is supporting the claim. However, if you are to do say... 100 tests on claims that are not true, you would expect 5 of them to have a p-value of less than 0.05, for which one would falsely say that those claims are true (when in fact they are not). Now, I realize that we are doing 1 test here, but we are choosing to do this test because we are noticing a statistical anomaly. This leads to some bias in our results.

When I say 'within the statistical norm', here is my reasoning. There is a phenomenon in statistics called 'poisson clumping'. A quick way to describe this is that given enough random results, and if we look at enough different statistics, it is highly likely that we will observe a group of unlikely events clustered together. What I'm trying to say is that if we looked at all the stats of any team, we could easily find a sequence of events (whether it be shots, penalties, blocks, what have you) that seem to deviate far from what one would statistically expect. This kind of event is completely normal statistically. That being said, having 12 penalties in 2 games (6 penalties/game) and then 19 penalties in 7 games (around 2 per game, my apologies if I messed up the exact numbers here) does not seem that unrealistic in such a small sample.

In a perfect world I would be able to give you numbers and a p-value, but it would be very difficult to do so. To truly get an accurate p-value, one would have to know the number of powerplays each team had in every game this year (and in the past if you wanted more accurate results). Then one would have to run a series of simulations to see how often an event like the Canucks excess of penalty calls occurs. If I get really ambitious I could try that.

I'll take a look at the rest of the comments and edit this post if there's anything I need to add. Thanks for all the replies.

*edit* reading what I wrote again, all I would need to do a rough test is a mean and standard deviation of the number of power plays per game for all the games in the NHL this year. That requires a lot of digging (over 150 games)

[Tragoedia]

If the Canucks starts getting penalized with phantom calls.... Torts should really tell some 4th liner to really do something worthy of a penalty. Like have Weise give a Bobby Clarke "love tap" on some star player.

Someone named Kelly maybe. I would love if some player gave Kelly Sutherland the Cooke treatment and permanently ended his hockey career. He has zero ethics and is part of a system that is ruining hockey for me.

[PSU]

Hi again, I'll try and address some of the issues you all have been raising. I haven't read all the replies since my last post so I apologize if I don't recognize some of the comments.

First of all, it's really hard to do straightforward calculations to come up with a p-value. Any method that does this has inherent flaws in its methodology. It's much more complicated statistically, because of something called multiple comparisons. Traditionally, the p-value at which something is considered 'significant' is one which is lower than 0.05. The smaller the p-value, the more evidence there is supporting the claim. However, if you are to do say... 100 tests on claims that are not true, you would expect 5 of them to have a p-value of less than 0.05, for which one would falsely say that those claims are true (when in fact they are not). Now, I realize that we are doing 1 test here, but we are choosing to do this test because we are noticing a statistical anomaly. This leads to some bias in our results.

When I say 'within the statistical norm', here is my reasoning. There is a phenomenon in statistics called 'poisson clumping'. A quick way to describe this is that given enough random results, and if we look at enough different statistics, it is highly likely that we will observe a group of unlikely events clustered together. What I'm trying to say is that if we looked at all the stats of any team, we could easily find a sequence of events (whether it be shots, penalties, blocks, what have you) that seem to deviate far from what one would statistically expect. This kind of event is completely normal statistically. That being said, having 12 penalties in 2 games (6 penalties/game) and then 19 penalties in 7 games (around 2 per game, my apologies if I messed up the exact numbers here) does not seem that unrealistic in such a small sample.

In a perfect world I would be able to give you numbers and a p-value, but it would be very difficult to do so. To truly get an accurate p-value, one would have to know the number of powerplays each team had in every game this year (and in the past if you wanted more accurate results). Then one would have to run a series of simulations to see how often an event like the Canucks excess of penalty calls occurs. If I get really ambitious I could try that.

I'll take a look at the rest of the comments and edit this post if there's anything I need to add. Thanks for all the replies.

*edit* reading what I wrote again, all I would need to do a rough test is a mean and standard deviation of the number of power plays per game for all the games in the NHL this year. That requires a lot of digging (over 150 games)

I disagree, there is a much simpler option that is almost as powerful. Treating each team as one data point you can easily get a mean value and a standard deviation of PP opportunities per game in the league. This has obvious flaws/over-simplifications, but since all teams have played more than a couple games and have played close to the same number this allows for a very quick and simple t-test. We are not curing cancer here or submiting to a scientific journal, we are merely testing if one sports teams stat is significantly different from the other teams in the league. This is easily tested and the answer with a nearly universally accepted p-value of 0.05 is 'YES'. With a ridiculously conservative p-value of 0.01 the answer is still 'YES'. We cannot claim to know the cause of the difference, but we can credibly say that there is a difference.

Additionally we got 2 PPs today. If the league average is 3.6, and there is no bias towards the Canucks we should have had a 50:50 chance of getting more than 3.6. This does not constitute a statistical test, but who in this forum is honestly surprised we got fewer than the 3.6 we should have expected? If you truly believe there is no bias, I will bet you we get fewer than 3.6 PPs tomorrow too.

[CanucksAtHome]

I disagree, there is a much simpler option that is almost as powerful. Treating each team as one data point you can easily get a mean value and a standard deviation of PP opportunities per game in the league. This has obvious flaws/over-simplifications, but since all teams have played more than a couple games and have played close to the same number this allows for a very quick and simple t-test. We are not curing cancer here or submiting to a scientific journal, we are merely testing if one sports teams stat is significantly different from the other teams in the league. This is easily tested and the answer with a nearly universally accepted p-value of 0.05 is 'YES'. With a ridiculously conservative p-value of 0.01 the answer is still 'YES'. We cannot claim to know the cause of the difference, but we can credibly say that there is a difference.

I will take a look at this - it would be very rough but I will do some thorough calculations and see how they compare.

What is the null hypothesis of your test?

*ninja edit* The problem with this test is that it doesn't give an accurate spread of the variability of PPs per game. For example, if a team had an average of 3.5, did they just get 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 4? Or did they get 1,8,7,4,0,1? One is much more variable than the other and will give very different results.

[PSU]

I will take a look at this - it would be very rough but I will do some thorough calculations and see how they compare.

What is the null hypothesis of your test?

Null hypothesis would be that the Canucks PP opportunities per game are the same as those for the 29 other teams in the league. I already ran the test and SPSS gave me a p=0.000. I find that value very hard to believe as the Canucks are less than 3 standard deviations from the mean, but that is the answer it gave me. As you are aware, that is a result we should get less than once every 1000 seasons if there is no bias in PPs, yet it feels remarkably similar to last year's off season (I don't think that test even needs to be run, that was freaking brutal).

[PSU]

I will take a look at this - it would be very rough but I will do some thorough calculations and see how they compare.

What is the null hypothesis of your test?

*ninja edit* The problem with this test is that it doesn't give an accurate spread of the variability of PPs per game. For example, if a team had an average of 3.5, did they just get 3, 3, 4, 4, 3, 4? Or did they get 1,8,7,4,0,1? One is much more variable than the other and will give very different results.

Again I disagree. We are getting the distribution of MEANS, one mean for each team as a single data point. If there is high variability in PP per game for each team, this variability would be captured in the standard deviation of the mean of means as well, and the standard deviation of the mean of means would be correspondingly high.

In other words, if every team got 3 PPs every game there would be no standard deviation for the mean of each team (each team's mean = 3, SD = 0), but that would also be true for the mean of the means (over all mean = 3, SD = 0). Conversely, if variability was high (sometimes 0 PPs sometimes 20 PPs, foregoing the violation of a normal distribution) we would see much higher standard deviations for each teams as you have stated, but we would also see a higher standard deviation for the mean of all teams, which is what I am advocating. It is still an non-publishable test, but for a question of trivial importance it works.

[CanucksAtHome]

Null hypothesis would be that the Canucks PP opportunities per game are the same as those for the 29 other teams in the league. I already ran the test and SPSS gave me a p=0.000. I find that value very hard to believe as the Canucks are less than 3 standard deviations from the mean, but that is the answer it gave me. As you are aware, that is a result we should get less than once every 1000 seasons if there is no bias in PPs, yet it feels remarkably similar to last year's off season (I don't think that test even needs to be run, that was freaking brutal).

Let me just ask you this... run the same test for all of the other teams and see how many of them fail the test as well. Does that mean there is a conspiracy against a bunch of other teams as well?