Daniel Tolensky now blogging for TSN

Some of you guys may remember Daniel Tolensky from HBuzz. He's now blogging for TSN. I really enjoyed his blogs and found he was impartial and had some great in-depth analysis of the latest topics. This is where he'll be hanging out on TSN:

http://www.tsn.ca/blogs/beyond_the_scoresheet/?id=blogs-beyond_the_scoresheet

Good on him. I remember him being a straight shooter, who seemed to know his stuff and having some sources in Edmonton. Although I can't remember the topic, I remember a sold piece he wrote that was a real lightning rod for criticism. He stuck to his guns though and defended his opinion.

Looking forward to his stuff.

I liked his stuff over on HB, but his first outing with TSN left me unimpressed. Calling his spot "Beyond the stats" then reeling off a bunch of nearly useless numbers that correlate *nothing* is not a great way to start off. The biggest correlation factor between pre-season and regular-season success is the make up of the team. Some teams have their lineups set from game 1, others have 20 rookies in camp and half of them stick around until the last couple of games. Also the pre-season lacks any structure. Some teams play 8 games; some only 4. The Sens played something like 4 of their 6 games before they had a couple of days practicing.

Anyhow, I'll bookmark the link and check it out from time to time but, I'm just being honsest, this was not his best work.

wprager wrote:I liked his stuff over on HB, but his first outing with TSN left me unimpressed. Calling his spot "Beyond the stats" then reeling off a bunch of nearly useless numbers that correlate *nothing* is not a great way to start off. The biggest correlation factor between pre-season and regular-season success is the make up of the team. Some teams have their lineups set from game 1, others have 20 rookies in camp and half of them stick around until the last couple of games. Also the pre-season lacks any structure. Some teams play 8 games; some only 4. The Sens played something like 4 of their 6 games before they had a couple of days practicing.

Anyhow, I'll bookmark the link and check it out from time to time but, I'm just being honsest, this was not his best work.

The one interesting thing was that teams that did very well in the pre-season (>90% win pct) made the playoffs and teams that did poorly (<30% win ptc) did not. Beyond that, it's a crap shoot, but there are some interesting trends that have shown up over the years.

A new Tolensky blog is up... and it's all about Truculence...

http://www.tsn.ca/blogs/beyond_the_scoresheet/?id=299874