a piece of me

The Cormier Cup - Hockey Pool Tips and Analysis 2010

Patrick Kane

Hi there hockey fans.  As many of you out there in the Piece Of Me Blogosphere already know we do an annual NHL hockey pool with the NHL salary cap rules and the actual player salaries.  

In the Cormier Cup Hockey Pool we each choose 20 players (forwards or defensemen, no goalies – yet!) and you get 1 point for every point your player gets.  So you have “spend wisely” as you “shop” for your team on Pool Day. It is an elimination pool so once a player is picked no one else can pick that same player. Selection order is taken from names in a hat and we a “snake draft” for order to the person who picks last in the first round gets to pick first in the second round.  

The other thing that makes our pool a little different, I guess, is that we choose 20 players for the entire regular season (and award 1 winner for the regular season) and then we KEEP all the same players for the playoffs as well.

I thought it might be fun and interesting if I crunched up some numbers and posted them here for all our poolies.  While these stats are here to help those in our pool, I imagine that it might also be helpful to some of the other the dozens of thousands of billions of hordes of daily readers who are in hockey pools of their own.

One effective (but difficult) strategy is to try to predict which teams will make the playoffs (and do well in them) and then choose more players from those teams.  If you are correct (and a little lucky) in your predictions, the theory suggests you should do well because those players will give you points in both the regular season and the playoffs.

To help us all predict what teams will make the playoffs I’ve compiled some stats and put together a couple “Playoff Trees”.

Here is how last year’s NHL Playoffs ended up:

NHL Playoffs 2009-10

And here is a blank Playoff Tree that you can use to help you make some predictions about who you think might make it to the playoffs.

NHL 2010-11 Playoff Predictions

But now you may find yourself asking: “Self, how the hell do I know which teams will make the playoffs?”

Well, of course, that’s half the fun of any hockey pool.  But fret not!  You’ve come to the right place.  While no one can accurately predict exactly which teams will make the playoffs in today’s NHL we can at least look at some of the history and what teams have done well in recent years.  

Below is a list of every NHL team and the total Points they received at the end of the season for the last 5 NHL seasons.  I’ve also totaled those points up (on the right) and given them a ranking (on the left) so that you can easily see how well teams have done in recent years.  (Points marked in grey indicate that the team won The Stanley Cup that year

NHL Team Standings (MOST POINTS) For the Last 5 Years (2010)

And because our hockey pool (and most hockey pools) are about Points (i.e. how many goals and assists you get) I’ve done the same thing with Team Goals so you can see which teams have scored the most goals in recent years.  (Goals marked in grey indicate that the team won The Stanley Cup that year).

NHL Team Standings (MOST GOALS) For the Last 5 Years (2010)

But wait!  That’s not all!  As Steve Irwin would say, “Take a look at this!”  I’ve also been examining the top NHL scorers in the past few years in hopes that it might provide us with some insight into which players are likely to be chosen in the first couple of rounds of picks.

What I did with this chart is I took the top 10 scoring leaders (most points during the regular season) for each of the past 5 NHL seasons and compiled all their stats during the past 5 seasons.  I’ve provided totals for the past 5 seasons and an average Points/Season (on the right) and ranked them (on the left) based on their points totals for past 5 years.  (Points marked in grey indicate that the player won The Stanley Cup that year). 

NHL Points Leaders From the Last 5 Years (2010)

(Note: I took out players who are no longer in the NHL like Jaromir Jagr and Joe Sakic – if those players return I promise to add them again in the future.)

Remember there are no trades allowed in our hockey pool (yet!) so choose wisely!  Hope this helps with your hockey pool predictions and selections.  

Good luck in your pools. So say we all!

Please note: The Piece of Me Empire has endeavored to the best of our efforts to ensure the accuracy of this information but can take no responsibility for any incorrect information.  All stats should be independently verified by yourself before choosing players for your hockey pool. If you see any errors or omissions in any of this information please leave a comment and let me know.

“I told Pat I want to be him for Halloween. I almost got hit and I told Pat I should stop teasing him.”

     - Tie Domi, talking about Toronto Maple Leafs Coach Pat Quin

The Frikadelle! A Chemically Impregnated Cattle Broiled Slowly Over Fake Charcoal

Big_burger

If you’re like me you often wonder where certain words come from.  Word origins have always interested me.  The other day I was wondering about the word “hamburger.”

Why do we call them hamburgers?  There must be a reason.  Were the original hamburgers made with ham? 

So I headed over to The Internet and looked it up.  Interestingly hamburger seems to have originated from Germany, probably sometime in the 18th century.  And the hamburger got it’s name from the port of Hamburg, Germany.  As more and more travelers (mostly sailors I imagine) visited Hamburg and had tasted steaks prepared in this new way the idea started to catch on.  Other areas, including the New York city harbour started offering “steak cooked in the Hamburg style”. 

So the name “hamburger” originates from the city of Hamburg. 

As is often the case when one of my Friends of the Internet answers a question for me, I found myself with another new question:  So, if the hamburger is called that because it comes from Hamburg, what do they call it when you are in Hamburg?  It would seem silly that residents of Hamburg would ask for a steak cooked in the Hamburg style – specially when in Hamburg.  I wondered: Do the residents of Hamburg just call it a burger, or a steak, or a patty, or something else? 

And, as Richard Dawson often said, “The answer is…”:  The hamburger patty is no longer called Hamburg Steak in Germany but rather "Frikadelle", "Frikandelle" or "Bulette", originally Italian and French words.

Huh!  Interesting stuff.

Still hungry?  Want more?  Find out more than you’d probably ever want to know about the hamburger on Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg

"It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun."
- Ray Kroc, creator of the McDonald's franchise

A Peek Inside My Head… Eww!

Battlestar Galactica Posters

Lately whenever I remember my dreams (which isn’t often) I’ve been dreaming about being back in high school.  It’s not either of the two high schools that I attended and none of the kids I remember from those days are there… and I’m usually my age now when I’m there.

The funny part though is the high school is always the same.  It’s small and tall like a fortress. The ceilings seem barely 7” tall and the lighting is dark and oppressive so everywhere you go it’s like you’re in the command center of the Battlestar Galactica (the new series of course - or a scene of Das Boot if you’ve never seen Battlestar - this is no High School Musical!).  Although small the schools always seem to be built like a maze so it’s hard to find your classes and your lockers.  

And I’m always late (or going to be late) for class or arguing with my teachers or the adminstration.  That part is at least very much like my real world experiences at high school.

“I had a dream last night so boring it woke me.”

     - Ted Danson, as Peter Lowenstein in the film Body Heat (1981)

rEmail: Computer Chip Video

It's kinda fuzzy but it's still fun to watch.

Computer Chips

"VIDEO GAMES HELP WANTED (SEPTEMBER 2, 2005):

NINTENDO EXPERT NEEDED. $50,000 salary + bonus.  Equal opportunity employer.
LOOKING FOR GOOD MARIO BROTHERS PLAYER.  $100,000 plus your own car.
CAN YOU SAVE THE PRINCESS?  We need skilled men & women.  $75,000 + retirement.
Expanding company needs skilled computer games operator...
IF YOU HAVE 50,000 HOURS OR MORE OF VIDEO GAME EXPERIENCE, WE NEED YOU!
DO YOU LAUGH IN THE FACE OF KILLER GOOMBAS?  Call us.  $80,000 yr. plus a free house.
SUPER MARIO BROS. Expert.  $95,000 yr. Four-day work week + Ferrari.
DO YOU KNOW A NINTENDO EXPERT?  Please read him or her this ad...

    - Hopeful parents dream of their sons future as he sits in front of the television absorbed in a video-game, Gary Larson, “The Far Side”

rEmail: The Lion Whisperer

You may remember the story of Christian the Lion reuniting with his 2 human companions after being re-integrated back into the wild. You can watch that amazmafying video where they met Christian in the wild for the first time in my previous blog post.� While this video about Kevin Richardson ("The Lion Whisperer") doesn't take place in the wild, the work that he is doing is still incredible!

Kevin Richardson

The Lion Whisperer

Amazing! I wouldn't do it. But I'm glad that someone has the courage (no pun intended) to.

“I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.”
���� - George Bernard Shaw

"After The Wizard Of Oz I was typecast as a lion, and there aren't all that many parts for lions."
���� - Bert Lahr

I've been busy... on Twitter

Follow me @thechriscormier

I haven't been blogging as much as I would like. We've been busy with work and trying to enjoy what little summer we've had.  However, during this hiatus I've been on Twitter.  If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters.  It's supposed be a quick update (sometimes with a link) on what you are doing and what's going on in your life.

I've seen the blogs of others where they just post their Twitter updates for the week. Lame!  But I realize that some of the readers of this blog (not naming any names - you know who you are!) are not on Twitter, don't understand Twitter, or just don't like Twitter.  So for those of you not on Twitter, here are a few highlights (in order from the most recent) of what you've been missing:

• Disney is buying Marvel comics. Hmm, not sure how I feel about this. http://twurl.nl/8n2aau I think my younger self would be very unhappy.
• Finished 25 seasons of NHL09 (as the Flyers)! Salary cap went over $112 million and it took the Leafs until 2030 to win the Stanley Cup.
• Sherri and I now have RockBand 2! Rockin the house with plastic instruments!
• District 9 was worth every penny ($6 before noon!). Lived up to my every expectation. I'm hoping for District 10 next year!
• Scored several 90+% songs in RockBand on HARD this weekend! [sound of me patting myself on the back]
• Ta-Da! Everyday Hero strikes again. Extinguished a neighbour's small truck fire before fire dept arrived today! Gonna need a mask or a cape.
• I read that they are considering a movie about the old "ViewMaster" toy. Come on! What's the great burning story dieing to be told here?
• Good deed done. Found a stray dog, caught him, walked him around the 'hood and found owner. Humane Society doesn't work past 6pm.
• I Love this! The world's most powerful bomb doesn't damage or pollute the environment! Phew! http://snurl.com/os207
• Adjust the sine wave of this magnetic envelope so that anti-neutrons can pass through it but anti-gravitons cannot. Re-watching Voyage Home.
• Just hours away from a full week without my Xbox. Come on Repair People, fix it faster!
• Flu-like symptoms: 3, Me: 1. Feeling better after a day of sleep and anti-bodies.
• Back from the doctor. No swines and H1N1's mentioned. That's good. It is catchy. That's bad.
• It's only been 2 business days that the Xbox has been in for repairs. I'm guessing it might be too early to call and see if it's been fixed
  
• I'm glad the garbage strike seems to be almost over. We have so much recycling in the garage, I think I saw Wall-E in there yesterday!
• Was surprised and slightly embarrassed by how excited I was to hear they're making a Hong Kong Phooey movie http://snurl.com/o25pp
• Such a small world. Went to the neighbour's wedding and found 4 cousins (whom I've never met) from the east coast were also in attendance.
• 

  Twitter
  Sometimes I wonder if my clients have bets with friends and co-workers about how many times they can tell me that their project is "urgent"
• Creepy story about a mysterious blob that's cruising around the ocean, devouring things. http://is.gd/1BbiV
  
• ideas company is officially on Facebook. Check us out and become a fan at: http://digg.com/u18ZyZ
• I remember when it was acceptable to leave your dog's poop on the neighbour's lawn. How long until cat owners have to pick up kitty-poop?
  
• Finished Saints Row 2 tonight. Not as a good as GTA but a fun substitute.Thinking of trading up for Godfather 2. I know it was you Fredo!
• If you believe in psychokinesis to raise my hand.
• KINGS is my new fav show! Please sign the petition to hopefully convince NBC to not cancel the show: http://digg.com/u17aGE
  
• Need a RockBandage after a Canada Day on tour with the plastic instruments
• I LOVE the way Gabriel Byrne always has just the perfect thing to say on In Treatment (season2)! I'm so jealous of a fictional character.
• Been looking at the free stuff on CraigsList. Come one people! Why did you keep that 35-yr old pink couch so long and who's gonna want that?
  
• I hate indecisive people. I don’t know whether to scream at them or ignore them until they go away.
• Ugh. First day (ever) of gardening done. Now just waiting for the pain to go away. Go away pain.
• Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
• My all-time fav video game is getting yet another sequel! ya! http://bit.ly/U6Z6W
• Works over and now I'm getting things started for next year's hockey pool - yes, already!
• Droppin' it like it's hot. Cuz it is. Really hot!
• I don't have a big ego, I'm way too cool for that.
  
• Listening to Empire Strikes Back in the background while I work today... aaaaahhh, like an old friend whispering in your ear
• 84.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot
  
• Vader's my dad? What gives Kenobi? http://tinyurl.com/lag7wm
• A Nobel Peace Prize? I would KILL for one of those
• Thank-you for not discussing the outside world today.
• wait a minute, is that Gary Bettman? http://tinyurl.com/ov87km
• Celebrating Twilight Zone Day by re-watching season 1 of the Serling classic... while I work of course
• “Criticize by creating.” - Michelangelo. I could not agree more.
• Doing away with, eliminating and eradicating redundancy!
• As I said before, I never repeat myself.
  
• In 2002 Denzel Washington said, "Chris Cormier is the greatest" Thanks Denzel!
• I'd give my left hand to be ambidextrous
• Had soo much fun playing Battlestar Galactica board game last night! Had Battlestar dreams all night.
• Earth-like planet discovered... only 20 light years and a Kessel Run away http://tinyurl.com/dmuhsl

Aaaah, I made you want more, didn't I? Don't miss another tweet. Join Twitter (it's free) and follow me at www.twitter.com/thechriscormier

HINT: After you've joined Twitter, set up your profile and followed me you will want to download one of the free software programs available (like Seesmic or TweetDeck) that will make it easier and more enjoyable to be a twit who tweets.

"It's one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet."
     - New York Times

"Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter."
     - Newsweek

Chickenosaurus. Bringing dinosaurs back to life.

Chickenosaurus

WOW! This is so exciting! A Canadian palaeontologist is planning to create/birth/hatch a baby dinosaur using chicken embryos. Unlike the Jurassic Park books and movies this process wouldn’t involve the use of actual DNA from dinosaurs.

Read the full article at Macleans.ca:

The quest to build a dinosaur. Scientists are working to bring dinosaurs back to life. They think they’re getting close.

Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun... I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that, that you’re using here:  it didn’t require any discipline to obtain it.  You know, you read what others had done and you, and you took the next step.  You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves so you don’t take any responsibility -- for it.  You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunch box and now you’re selling it.  You want to sell it.
    - Jeff Goldblum, as Ian Malcolm in the film Jurassic Park (1993)

Sci-fi returns to its roots with District 9

District 9

What sci-fi has always done right (when sci-fi itself is done right) is force us to look at ourselves in a new light. To see the problems of our generation and the problems of humanity from an entirely new perspective. To make us think.

District 9 is one of those rare science fiction movies (certainly in recent years) where the alien invaders are NOT the bad guys.

Director (and South African native) Neill Blomkamp makes us look at the nastiness of apartheid again. But this time “the enemy” spewing the hate and cruelty is all of us - humans.  The story is told about alien refugees stuck on earth and how they are being herded, controlled, and killed by humans and how our initial attempts to help and offer aid to the aliens quickly leads them into extreme poverty.

The international community play a big role in this movie, as a multinational group called MNU, a thinly veiled representation of the United Nations, complete with big white troop vehicles.  This is not the typical “corporations-are-evil” story line that we see in almost every sci-fi movie or TV show today.

I had very high expectations going into this movie and I have to say that it far exceeded every single one!  District 9 is absolutely one of the best sci-fi movies in recent years.  I had that same sense of excitement and wonder as I did watching The Matrix for the first time, or Alien, or maybe even… dare I say it?... when watching Blade Runner for the first time in the theatre back when I was 11 years old in 1982.  Okay, comparing it to Blade Runner goes to far – way too far. But I’m telling you I LOVED THIS MOVIE!

The special effects were very impressive. The aliens and weaponry were fantastic.  The movie’s $30 million dollar budget easily looked 2 or 3 times that at several different points.  The aliens might have looked just a little too similar to those in the Predator movies but still creative enough to be impressive on their own.

District 9

There are no ewoks or Jar Jar Binks, no president's jumping into fighter jets, no thinly veiled George Bush characters of any kind, no one says "I GOT to get me one of these!", and Bruce Willis doesn't sacrifice himself to save the world at the end.  Just an excellent story that doesn't preach, get mellow dramatic, or talk down to you.

District 9

The documentary-style photography, realistic looking news footage, interviews and news reporting clips give the film a realistic feel and ups the believability right from the first frame, but the hand-held cam style of much of the film might turn off some viewers the same way that Blair Witch Project did.

As much as I liked the ending (no spoilers here folks, this is a NO SPOILER ZONE... or,... um District!), I find myself already hoping for a District 10 next year.  District 9 has just the right amount of science in its fiction and turns out to be the perfect mix of storytelling, acting, action, and social commentary.  If this movie doesn't get recognized for something at the Oscars, I will never watch the Oscars ever again!

"Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about."
     - Ray Bradbury

Toronto's Green Bin Program: A Big Waste of Time and Money

I know I haven't blogged in a long while.  Too busy to blog I guess. There are have been soo many things to talk about too. Such a shame.

In the midst of the Toronto Garbage Strike of 09, I read Mayor David Miller's defense of the Green Bin program in the Toronto Star today and I had to say, "OH COME ON!"

In case you missed it, The Toronto Star, the local paper most generous in support of the Mayor, did a piece about Toronto's Green Bin program and it's many shocking failures.  Here are a few excerpts from the article:

The City of Toronto boasts that its green bin program diverts a third of our garbage and turns it into "black gold" compost. But a Star investigation shows that the program – although nobly conceived – is a sham.

There are two problems. First, the city's claim of how much waste the program diverts from landfill is inflated. Second, some of the compost that is being produced will kill your plants because of its high salt content, according to laboratory tests.

The Star found that, over the past two years, thousands of tons of organics in various stages of the composting process have been dumped into a gravel pit, tossed into landfills or stockpiled on city property. What's more, some of the material residents are told to place in green bins – plastic bags and diapers – has wound up in the belly of a Michigan incinerator, despite Mayor David Miller's vow Toronto will never burn garbage.

And the "black gold" compost? Doesn't sound anything I'd want in my garden (not that I have a garden):

Tests conducted for the Star by A&L Canada, a leading agricultural laboratory, found serious problems with compost produced by two separate companies contracted by the city to process the organic waste.

In one case, the lab found the compost was unfinished, meaning it was rushed through the process, in which micro-organisms break the waste down into a high-nutrient soil conditioner.

In the second case, the sodium content of compost given out at Toronto's Environment Days was so high that it would kill plants. (More curing time would have removed naturally occurring sodium in vegetables and the salt we add to food.)

Worst of all, much of the Green Bin program is going straight to land fill!

Miller's re-election promise in 2006 vowed to ramp up diversion rates to 70 per cent by 2010, so there's pressure on the city to claim the highest possible rate.

Toronto's annual output of 120,000 tons of organics has created a mad scramble for processors. In each of 2007 and 2008, the city shipped 1,000 truckloads to Quebec. By the time the green bin waste arrived, locked inside plastic bags the city wants residents to use, it was sometimes so rotten it went straight to landfill, says Quebec's environment ministry. Some processors can't handle liquefied rotten material.

Mayor David Miller promised that Toronto would no longer burn it's garbage, but thousands of tons of Green Bin plastics are sent to Detroit to be burned!

The Star found that Orgaworld, which processes about 40 per cent of Toronto's organic waste, has been sending thousands of tons of "residual" plastics to be burned in Detroit. It turns out about one-fifth of Toronto's organic output is being burned or buried in landfills.

You just have to ask yourself:  Is this worth all the money we pour into this program and all the work we put into the program at the curb? Surely there is someone out there who wants to be Mayor that can do a better job than this!

Please take the time to read the entire Toronto Star article: Green bins: A wasted effort? and Province steps in to fix green bin mess.

"It is important because the green bin program has been a failure in terms of what the public expectations are... Some of this is ending up in landfill. Plastic bags are being incinerated. This is not what the mayor promised.
     - Case Ootes, Chairman of Responsible Government Group, Toronto Star, Province steps in to fix green bin mess (July 7, 2009)

Why bother recycling … if you live in Toronto?

Toronto is sending it's recycling all the way to China!

Are freakin’ kidding me?!  Who thought this was a good idea?  Instead of just throwing away our plastics and paper materials and shipping them to Detroit with the rest of our garbage, we developed an expensive, labour intensive recycling program.  Because that’s good for the environment, right?

Wrong.  Couldn’t be more wrong. 

Toronto City Council could NOT be more wrong!
We are shipping materials from our Blue Bin program all the way to China because we don’t have the facilities or the cheap labour to deal with them here in Toronto.  Or anywhere in Ontario - or anywhere in Canada for that matter.

Yup, that’s right.  Toronto is shipping thousands of tonnes of recycling materials to China so that they can be recycled there into new materials that are then sold back to us.  (Apparently they turn it into cardboard and inexpensive toys – probably covered in lead paint – and then sell them back to us).  As much of 20,000 tonnes of Toronto's recycling material was sent all the way to China in 2007 and 2008.

There is NO WAY this is helping the environment!  Have the Toronto City Councillors never heard of a concept called “carbon footprint”.  What kind of a carbon footprint do you think that leaves on the world?  Here is an excerpt from The Toronto Star article that describes the very long (and I’m sure very expensive) journey that our recycling materials have to make before they can be recycled:

“To get to China from Toronto, the mixed paper is stacked in bales, placed in shipping containers and sent across country to the port of Vancouver by train, said Jake Westerhof, of Canada Fibres, which sells Toronto's paper to Nine Dragons.

From Vancouver, it is placed on a large freighter ship and spends several weeks at sea before arriving in one of China's southern ports. It is moved into a truck a driven several hours before arriving at the massive Nine Dragons paper mill in the province of Guangdong.”

Toronto is using China's cheap labour for it's recycling

Good Job Mayor David Miller!
What a nightmare!  They are sending our recycling materials over 12,000 km across land and sea.  How can this be good for the environment? How can this be good for our city or our country?  

Are you concerned about the environment?  Then this has got to stop!

If you are concerned about how many jobs are being lost in Ontario, then this has got to stop!

If you think there is a serious lack of leadership in Canada - then this has got to stop!

That's to say nothing about the morality of doing business with a country with such a horrible record or human rights violations or the conditions that the chinese workers face in that country... as they recycle our garbage.  Nice! 

Please read the entire story at TheStar.com (this is where your tax dollars are going and this is what's happening with your recycling program):  Blue-box leftovers go to China and back: Recycling efforts create 'contentious' carbon footprint

If you still think it’s worth your time and effort to recycle anything in this city, can you please explain why I should even bother.  We should recycle our City Councillors.  Send them to China – if they’d even take them.

"The majority of the residential group, if questioned, will confirm that they are anxious to support recycling initiatives, that they do so because they are concerned for the environment, and that they do themselves actively separate their waste for recycling. If what they avow is true, then it is somewhat surprising that source-separation schemes do not enjoy a much higher success rate. The reason appears to be that privately many householders find source separation inconvenient, occasionally untidy, and properly the responsibility of the municipality rather than themselves."
     - A.G. Manser, Practical Handbook of Processing and Recycling Municipal Waste

"People in the suburbs are simply going to have to wake up and understand that they're destroying the environment."
    - Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae, 2006