THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Great post, Tango.  Yesterday’s game was awesome to watch, just an all-around well-played game between the best players in the world.  February began with a similar Super Bowl, and ended with this game.

And as a Blackhawks fan, the Olympics were extremely satisfying.  Kane was probably the best player on the ice yesterday, Keith was Canada’s best defenseman, and Toews got to show the world that he’s the best young all-around player in the NHL.  Had the Slovakian team held on, every Hawks player in the Olympics would have won a medal.

That really was a helluva game.

Don’t most people go by the total medal count?  Isn’t that what Canada said they would win??
Thoughts?
vr, Xei

That’s what the Canada Olympic Committee said.  Who cares what their marketing slogan said?

***

As far as Canadians are concerned, winning hockey wipes away everything.  I really believe that if Canada won every single event (85 golds) but did not bring back a medal in hockey, it would be looked upon the same as Canada bringing back just hockey gold and no other medal.

#4. wow, that’s pretty extreme.  Only comparison for the USA would be Men’s basketball, but I don’t think we’d feel even close to that strong.  The Men’s Hockey was great, the US and Canadian teams were very even in this tournament, a goal differential of only one goal between the two teams in head to head play and that one goal was an empty netter.
vr, Xei

Going down with the total of medal winners is interesting.  If Scandinavia were one country (Norway-Sweden-Finland-Estonia, and these places were united in the Middle Ages), they would have “won” the games with fourteen gold, twelve silver, and fourteen bronze medals.  I think Scandinavia has a smaller total population than Canada.  Half (130 out of 258) of the total medals awarded went to athletes from the European Union, the US and Canada combined for 63 out of 258 and these were unusually good Winter Olympics for both countries.

So there is some truth to the charge that the Winter Olympics is the white man’s Olympics.

I also agree that wins in teams sports should somehow be treated differently than wins in individual sports, maybe the winning teams should get a trophy.

And yes, it was a great game.

i agree with tom’s method for “weighting” the medal count. they should add up ever luge medal, skeleton and bobsled medal and count it for about 1/100 of a hockey bronze.  everyone wants to divide medal counts by population size, or wealth, or climate for the winter games.  whatever, all that matters is which sports youre rooting for.  in the summer olympics, if your country wins every single shooting and riflery medal but wins nothing else, are you going to be pumped? 

i think theres even more lunacy involved in this medal count obsession but thats probably more than enough of a rant than anyone wants to read here anyway.

Every country implicitly weights their results differently - the Norwegians place a lot of weight on nordic skiing, the Dutch place a lot of weight on speed-skating, etc. Because of this, many countries can come out of Vancouver thinking that it was a success.

The only country that I have heard is disappointed with their 2010 results is Russia - losing in the quarterfinals in hockey, losing the gold in men’s figure skating, and fewer medals overall than 2006.

But they won the platinum in figure skating!

Not only do certain countries place more importance on certain sports but they weigh the medals differently.

See....I’d think most medals (or prehaps a 3/2/1 weight system).....alot of countries tho just look at gold.  So depending on where you are, you could conclude Canada or USA had the most success.

It’s funny that the entire Canadian view on the success of the Olympics all hung on that one shot by Crosby.

If the coin had landed the other way, we’d only have had 13 gold medals instead of 99, and we’d all be talking about what a disappointment the Olympics were.

And if Parise hadn’t scored, we would have won but not had that Crosby moment. 

In the Olympics, it’s sometimes not enough to win—you need a good plotline.  Things just worked out perfectly.  It’ll be interesting to see how Crosby’s goal stacks up in hockey history.  I’m guessing ahead of 1987 Lemieux, but behind 1972 Henderson. 

But that’s in the heat of the moment.  Time will tell.

I don’t think it matches the Gretzky-Lemieux goal.

1. It was 99 feeding 66 from the defensive zone all the way to the offensive zone, some 150 feet, untouched from the faceoff.

2. It was 99, already at the top of his game, tournament MVP, and 66 having his coming out party and possibly an even better one than 99.

3. It was game 3 of a best of 3, each game decided by one goal (the same 6-5 score), and that goal was scored with less than 2 minutes to go.

It was a beautiful thing to watch.

I agree that the Gretzky/Lemieux goal was a much nicer hockey play.  But I think this will prove to be a bigger deal to Canadians, because even non-hockey-fans care more about what happens in the Olympics than what happens in the Canada Cup.

Henderson’s was a garbage goal, but that doesn’t matter ...

Best hockey tournament ever?

Some comments
1. The US played a better game yesterday than when they won the first game. They made 2 bad mistakes and they ended up in the net. The first game Miller bailed them out continually.
2. Crosby looked like he was in a fog most of the game, and didn’t have a good playoff round at all.
3. The US stood up to Canada physically the way no other team would have.
4. Brown,Kane and Kesler were the best line yesterday.
5. I hope and believe that we will see hockey in the next Olympics in spite of Bettman’s comments.
6. In spite of what the knock heads at ESPN like Cowherd say, hockey got a great boost from this. Some of those guys think the world revolves around the NBA and NFL.

I have always liked the Pronger-Kariya goal in the 2002 Gold Medal game where Lemieux dummies the puck through his legs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHEUa1Fidog#t=3m26s

It looks better from above the ice on the right wing, but that view isn’t in the video.

I agree with everything Rempart said.  Ryan Kesler in particular had a fantastic tournament.  As a Canucks fan it couldn’t have gone too much better, with Luongo and Team Canada winning gold, and Kesler being USA’s best forward and taking silver.

Cy says the street value of the medals favors Canada as well:

http://cybermetric.blogspot.com/2010/03/canada-wins-olympics-based-on-market.html

I can’t read his blog post, but it looks like he didn’t count the fact that the Canadian team gets some 23 medals for winning the hockey game.  So, I presume therefore that Canada demolishes all the countries.

Yes, that is correct. Once you count every medal (one for each player on a team), Canada is way ahead. I just noticed now that you posted it

here are the revised totals

CAN 41043.2
USA 25718.8
GER 15306
NOR 13122.6
AUT 8627.4
SWE 7357.6
KOR 6228.8
CHN 5760.2
RUS 4769.6
SUI 3245.8
FRA 2894.4
NED 2468.4
JPN 1506.8
POL 1450.6
AUS 1374
CZE 1097.8
LAT 900
ITA 847.2
BLR 840.4
SVK 840.4
CRO 603.4
SLO 603.4
GBR 537
FIN 466.6
EST 300
KAZ 300

Excellent.  This list makes more sense based on what you are doing: street value of all medals.

So, the curling team has 4 medals, the pairs skating have 2, etc, etc.