First Draft of Schedule - by Facey

[Nick]

you and shook face each other no?

[Robin Hood]

Great job on the schedule Nick. Thanks for the hard work.

[Shep]

you and shook face each other no?

Yep

[armandtanzarian]

Its all good Nick. I am happy facing any and all good teams just as well as bad ones. Been to the conference finals twice now. Be nice to make it there and move on for once but with Scotts recent antics not looking good again, lol.

[shooker]

Lol I find it funny that you said I need to play better eastern teams as an attempt at balance but the other top teams fly through their eastern scheduals lol. The West needs balanced schedules as does the East, who cares who's comf is better as long as all the scheduals are even in their respective conferences. The top teams in each comf playing only each other helps the weaker teams what kind of balance is that lol. I have zero problems with my sched but purposely giving teams harder schedules is not being fair lol its being bias and completely unfair lol.

Like I said I don't care about the sched, just good to finally hear bias was used in making it. Lol

[anton]

Lol I find it funny that you said I need to play better eastern teams as an attempt at balance but the other top teams fly through their eastern scheduals lol. The West needs balanced schedules as does the East, who cares who's comf is better as long as all the scheduals are even in their respective conferences. The top teams in each comf playing only each other helps the weaker teams what kind of balance is that lol. I have zero problems with my sched but purposely giving teams harder schedules is not being fair lol its being bias and completely unfair lol.

Like I said I don't care about the sched, just good to finally hear bias was used in making it. Lol

week 8, bring your a-game scrub

[Nick]

Well if you ignore all logic it's not fair I guess

[Chris]

I got a little sidetracked today, but I'm looking at the spreadsheet and I'm pretty sure I can fix everything in there. I'll use Shep's post as my reference point, and make sure that all inter-conference games are scheduled with minimal bias.

To limit any bias, I'll be using an internet randomizer - each team will play the top-three results. If there's a duplicate, I'll move to the fourth. If that's a duplicate, I'll move to the fitfth.

So what will be in alphabetical order...

Anaheim Ducks
Calgary Flames
Chicago Blackhawks
Colorado Avalanche
Columbus Blue Jackets
Dallas Stars
Detroit Red Wings
Edmonton Oilers
Los Angeles Kings
Minnesota Wild
Nashville Predators
Phoenix Coyotes
St. Louis Blues
San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks

Will be scrambled and randomized into something like this:

Colorado Avalanche
San Jose Sharks
Calgary Flames
Dallas Stars
Edmonton Oilers
Chicago Blackhawks
Phoenix Coyotes
Anaheim Ducks
Minnesota Wild
Los Angeles Kings
Nashville Predators
Vancouver Canucks
Columbus Blue Jackets
St. Louis Blues
Detroit Red Wings

[MSP4LYFE]

and might lose all three?

Here's hoping.

[Shoalzie]

Nick, you have my full support...this isn't an easy process by any means.

The format I was trying to go by was:

2 games against each division opponent (8 games)
1 game against each non-divisional opponent in conference (10 games)
Remaining games against out of conference opponent (2-3 games)

My way for deciding conference opponents was by random draw but no team would play two first place or two last place teams. If we had 3 out-of-conference games, I'd suggest every team play at least one team from each division.

The schedule would be based on either a 20 or 21 week format.

The easy part is to determine the opponents...the hard part is fitting the schedule together like a puzzle.

[Nick]

thats the same format i used last year shoalzie, and this year... getting it even close to lining up is an entirely different matter. Like i've said several times, the # of proper permutations for a successful (error free) schedule are very very few (tbh don't even know if there is more then one * see below*), tracing the origins of the matchup that threw the sequencing off is essentially starting over, if we're lucky HS will be able to find one of the repeated errors (west and east are just mirrors of each others)


** trying to make it clear why this is hard, without getting into the 20 weeks to find out**
i) 5 teams per division, so even in a *divisional* week there is 1 team left out
ii) 15 teams per conference, so even in a conference week there is a team left out

--> you say that's easy, just make 1 inter-league game in each of those weeks? that makes for a total of 21 inter-league weeks and lots of repeat match-ups.

Now try and move through this in an organized manner (especially when trying to make divisional weeks at the start and end of the season), and you run into errors like playing the same inter-league teams, and/or missing one of your divisional opponents, and/or missing a conference opponent. No we are not working within the same parameters as the NHL schedule makers, they have lots of off days (as well as other arena bookings, and travel).


Chris (Hockey Sense) -> any update on your adjustments? I'll be back on the ferry to the Island soon enough, and would like to fix the PHI/NJD x3, and will take another glance at some other things mentioned incase the fix is not too tedious.

[Chris]

It's almost done. I'm closing this up for the night because the screen was starting to blur a bit. I restarted the entire process - tried to get in inter-divisional match-ups as mixed up as I could.

I believe I'm down to nine teams. Should be done in the afternoon/morning.

[armandtanzarian]

If you guys can find a process that works without errors, i would be amazed. It would be very cool though.

[Chuck Norris]

Nick, you have my full support...this isn't an easy process by any means.

The format I was trying to go by was:

2 games against each division opponent (8 games)
1 game against each non-divisional opponent in conference (10 games)
Remaining games against out of conference opponent (2-3 games)

My way for deciding conference opponents was by random draw but no team would play two first place or two last place teams. If we had 3 out-of-conference games, I'd suggest every team play at least one team from each division.

The schedule would be based on either a 20 or 21 week format.

The easy part is to determine the opponents...the hard part is fitting the schedule together like a puzzle.

Thats the easy part Shaolzie.....if only the rest were. I was trying to help out Nick with the schedule and come up with some sort of a formula you could use and then just assign teams. After fighting with things for 6 hours jsut to get the format of the scedule going I gave up. I would run into a problem, fix it, then another would crop up as a result of the fix. Its no where as easy as Im sure any of us thought it was. Mad respect for the guys who put the schedule together.

[Chris]

Nick, you have my full support...this isn't an easy process by any means.

The format I was trying to go by was:

2 games against each division opponent (8 games)
1 game against each non-divisional opponent in conference (10 games)
Remaining games against out of conference opponent (2-3 games)

My way for deciding conference opponents was by random draw but no team would play two first place or two last place teams. If we had 3 out-of-conference games, I'd suggest every team play at least one team from each division.

The schedule would be based on either a 20 or 21 week format.

The easy part is to determine the opponents...the hard part is fitting the schedule together like a puzzle.

Thats the easy part Shaolzie.....if only the rest were. I was trying to help out Nick with the schedule and come up with some sort of a formula you could use and then just assign teams. After fighting with things for 6 hours jsut to get the format of the scedule going I gave up. I would run into a problem, fix it, then another would crop up as a result of the fix. Its no where as easy as Im sure any of us thought it was. Mad respect for the guys who put the schedule together.

I have it a bit more sorted out, but there are some duplicates in certain weeks. What I'm doing now, is leaving those blanks unfilled so that when I finish the rest, I'll be filling the rest of the schedule (20 unfilled blanks perhap?) - it'll take some time though. I'm down to 25 blank spots from the 630 I started with. 5 more and I'll do my best to fill out the rest - unless you want to take a stab at it.

[Nick]

i do not.

[Chris]

We have until October anyway

[hong57]

just checked.. the schedule for minny looks alright, thanks nick

[Nick]

I think Chris is still working on a cleaned up schedule.

[Chris]

^Yup. Will be on it tomorrow. Just finishing up my own work, and I'll have a few days off starting Monday.