SABRES WIN LOTTERY!!!! Will pick #1 overall in the 2018 Draft

[GOilers88]

they have not tanked and certainly not for 4 years. They intentionally iced a marginally competitive roster in 2014-15. Improved in ‘15-16 and 16-17, and unexpectedly took a step back this season. Many expected them to challenge for a wild card or at least not be in the basement of the east. Bad coaching, limited d-depth, injuries, and a bottom-6 of AHL-NHL tweeners contributed to their underachieving season.

I could make a snide remark that as an Oilers fan you know full well the experience of drafting first year over year yet not improving the following season despite trying. I could also make a snide remark that unlike the Oil, the Sabres finished last 3 seasons in 5, yet only drafted 1st once, unlike the Oil who drafted first overall 4 times in 6 years despite only once being last in the standings one time. But as an Oilers fan you know this.

I assumed that since it was coming from an Oilers fan the sarcasm would be highly detectable. I guess I was wrong.

 

[Sabresfansince1980]

No. This is wrong. You cannot ignore that the other teams all had winning combinations when #1 was drawn. You cannot simply take out their combinations as if they were not there. I can prove that this method is wrong by using your method in a simplified situation...

Ignore that other teams had winning combinations when #1 was drawn?? This doesn't make sense, because only one team had a winning combo when #1 was drawn, or you're explaining yourself poorly. Nobody is "taking out" numbers of teams 15-4. Logic dictates that all the combos those teams had in fact did not win. They were there, and they didn't win. We knew that one of the combos Buf, Mon, and Car had was the winner. But go ahead and keep posting a bunch of irrelevant math, it's semi-entertaining still.

 

[tripleX]

You're making this much harder than it really is. The results are given to us in reverse order, but the drawing for #1 happened first. Nothing taints the first draw, and the first draw odds cemented each team's chance at winning. Once 15-4 was announced, all we can go on from there is knowing how many combos are left, and how many of those combos belong to the three teams left. It's simple math from there, and everything else is a misunderstanding or an over-complication.

After the 15-4 was announced, each of Buf, Mon, and Car DID in fact have their chances increase at winning #1. Buf went from 185/1000 to 185/310. Mon went from 95/1000 to 95/310. Car went from 30/1000 to 30/310. Those odds didn't change at the drawing though, they only changed in retrospect given how the NHL presented the results. With what we had to work with before the final results, the 59.7% crowd is right, and it's not actually that hard to figure out.

I'd suggest to check my post http://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/145312519/ to understand how it works. Let me give you another very simple example too:

Let's say someone flips a normal/fair coin 3 times where each time there is 50% chance of head and 50% chance of tail. The 8 possible outcomes are

(1) 1st: Head, 2nd: Head, 3rd: Head: 12.5%
(2) 1st: Head, 2nd: Head, 3rd: Tail: 12.5%
(3) 1st: Head, 2nd: Tail, 3rd: Head: 12.5%
(4) 1st: Head, 2nd: Tail, 3rd: Tail: 12.5%
(5) 1st: Tail, 2nd: Head, 3rd: Head: 12.5%
(6) 1st: Tail, 2nd: Head, 3rd: Tail: 12.5%
(7) 1st: Tail, 2nd: Tail, 3rd: Head: 12.5%
(8) 1st: Tail, 2nd: Tail, 3rd: Tail: 12.5%

Before we know anything about the result, what's the chance that the first flip was Head? It's 50% and I think everyone agrees with it.

Now, if I tell you the result is all Tails, what's the chance that the first flip was Head (I emphasized 'was' here since the 3 flips were already done)? Because we now know the result is 3 Tails, the only possibility is (8) so the answer is that it's 0% the first flip was Head.

Again, before the first flip was made, it's 50%/50% chance of Head. But when we have more information of the result, it's not 50%/50% anymore.



If you feel all 3 being Tails is too extreme, we can use a different example and say the result is 2 Heads and 1 Tail, so what's the chance the first flip was Head?

When we know the result is 2 Heads and 1 Tail, only (2), (3), and (5) are the possible outcomes. Among these three, two of them, (2) and (3), have the first flip as Head. Thus, once we know the result is 2 Heads and 1 Tail (I want to emphasize again that we know more now), the chance of first flip as Head was 66.6% (2/3).

Edit: before anyone replies that flipping a coin 3 times is different to how NHL lottery works, I want to say that this example is to show percentage could be different once we have more information of the result. For NHL lottery, please see my post linked above.

 

[Royal Thunder]

All the other fanbases popping by to congratulate us is giving me the warm fuzzies. What a treat for all of us after that extremely difficult season, I'm just on cloud nine. This changes everything.

 

[brian_griffin]

I can't think of one thing the NHL has changed that I agree with.

• Moving the blue lines closer to the center ice line,
• having only 9 locations on the ice where a face-off can occur,
• "eliminating" stop-of-play whistles when the puck is tied up on the boards,
• permitting 2-line passes

eliminating ties (OT / SO) I'm leaning towards agreeing with.

everything else? more or less of useless/bad

Just give us #3, too, we don't mind!

Or Habs can draft him, Sabres get him for half the season.

I hope you get a roaring case of VD.

Victory Dahlin?

Finally Gorges and Mike Weber help us win

Nah, it's the 1975 Cup Final starting lineup.
1 Crozier
4 Korab
6 Schoenfeld
(7 Martin)
(11 Perreault)
14 Robert

I assumed that since it was coming from an Oilers fan the sarcasm would be highly detectable. I guess I was wrong.

My sincere apologies. btw, I'm old enough to remember all the Oiler Cup wins, the "battle of Alberta" with the Steve Smith own-goal in 1989, and Messier letting him skate the Cup 2nd after winning again in 1990.

 

[EichHart]

Only Montreal and Edmonton have more 1st overalls now in NHL history. We're tied at 3 with quite a few other teams.

 

[misterchainsaw]

Ignore that other teams had winning combinations when #1 was drawn?? This doesn't make sense, because only one team had a winning combo when #1 was drawn, or you're explaining yourself poorly. Nobody is "taking out" numbers of teams 15-4. Logic dictates that all the combos those teams had in fact did not win. They were there, and they didn't win. We knew that one of the combos Buf, Mon, and Car had was the winner. But go ahead and keep posting a bunch of irrelevant math, it's semi-entertaining still.

Perhaps I am explaining myself poorly. But the math I posted was not irrelevant at all; it was literally a proof that showed your method can not be correct using a hypothetical setup.

But if you didn't like the hypothetical, let's try the smell test using the real numbers. It's a bit more complicated because of the different odds of each team, but I can still show that your method is not possible using the same theory. For the record, this is where I realized I was wrong making the same assumption you did and that 60% could not possibly be right:

Let's say Buffalo, Ottawa, and Carolina were the three teams that won the top 3 picks. Can we agree that this is Buffalo's worst case scenario? IE that their percentage for getting the #1 seed given they are a top 3 pick is at its very worst when the teams with the 2nd and 3rd best odds also got a top 3 pick. Under your method, this would give Buffalo a 42.5% chance to win the #1 pick with those three teams. Any other combination of three teams that includes Buffalo gives Buffalo a better chance than 42.5% to get the #1 pick using your method. But we know they make the final 3 49.4% of the time. If they win 42.5% (or more) of the time they get into the top 3, and they get into the top 3 49.4% of the time, that creates an overall starting winning percentage that must be greater than 42.5 * 49.4 = 20.995%. But we know it's not. We know it's 18.5%. Contradiction. The method is debunked.

You were "taking out" the combinations of the teams from 4-15 by saying that Buffalo had an 18.5% / 31.5% chance of winning the first pick. This is a faulty assumption that assumes that each number combination is equally likely to be picked after we received additional information that Buffalo, Carolina, and Montreal were the 3 teams to hit their numbers. I know it's strange to fathom, but once we know Carolina hit a combination, each of their individual combinations becomes more likely to hit at each pick (not just the 3rd one).

In fact, Carolina's numbers become much more likely to have hit at all 3 spots because we know that one of the numbers had factually hit on one of them. Their percentages of each were 3.0%, 3.3%, and 3.6%. When we know that that in the case of them not winning 1st, it was Montreal or Buffalo, and in the cases of them not hitting 1st or 2nd it was Montreal and Buffalo getting the first two (in either order, it doesn't matter), at the start of the process their odds were 3.0% to hit the first pick, 3.45% to hit the 2nd pick (this one's approximate - you'd have to go into some recursive shit to nail it down exactly ), and 3.90% to hit the 3rd pick. We know one of those hit, and there's nothing about the process that would have us change the scale which pick hit - the fact that Buffalo and Montreal are the other two teams is already taken into account by their odds adjusting upward on the later picks. So, once we know one of those picks hit, the sum of the probabilities needs to be 100%. Simply scaling these gives you 28.98% for #1, 33.33% for #2, and 37.69% for #3. Numbers that are within a couple tenths of a percentage point of what I calculated earlier with a completely different method, adding evidence that these are indeed near the correct numbers, which is all I'm going for with an approximation factored in. (The real values are 29.119% for Carolina getting 1st, 33.027% for 2nd, and 37.854% for 3rd, all rounded to the nearest thousandth of a percentage point.)

Fun little statistical point that I know seems weird and counter-intuitive, but is absolutely correct: when the final 3 teams were announced, each of Carolina's 30 combinations had a 0.97% chance to hit on the 1st pick, while Buffalo's 315 each had a 0.12% chance to hit on the first pick. Montreal's 95 combinations each had a 0.34% chance to hit.

EDIT: I apologize for being a little redundant - this post was edited and rearranged at times so I know I said things more than once

 

[Myllz]

Before they decided the top 3, I really though Carolina was going to win it. When Bill Daly was about to flip the #1 card I was even zooming in on his glasses and was nearly 100% positive I was seeing a red Hurricanes reflection.

 

[Puppa2Miller]

Sorry to ask as it has probably been covered in here already, but who was the Sabres representative that watched the ping pong balls????

 

[haseoke39]

I'm still coming to terms. I didn't even allow myself to get excited for the draw. I was banking on #4 being assured at 7:30.

It's still just coming over me how perfect and necessary this pick is to the franchise, the rebuild, everything.

A rebuild that was looking dark now has a franchise player slotted into the biggest hole. This resets everything.

 

[Ace]

Sorry to ask as it has probably been covered in here already, but who was the Sabres representative that watched the ping pong balls????

No one. They didn’t send anyone in this time. I think only three teams did. Probably because of how long they knew they’d be locked in there

 

[Puppa2Miller]

No one. They didn’t send anyone in this time. I think only three teams did. Probably because of how long they knew they’d be locked in there

Thanks for the response. I would have thought all the teams involved would want to send someone in there to ensure the integrity of the process. Could you imagine the commotion if the 3 teams that sent someone in picked 1 - 3?

 

[Doug Prishpreed]

I'm still coming to terms. I didn't even allow myself to get excited for the draw. I was banking on #4 being assured at 7:30.

It's still just coming over me how perfect and necessary this pick is to the franchise, the rebuild, everything.

A rebuild that was looking dark now has a franchise player slotted into the biggest hole. This resets everything.

The positive energy generated by just winning the Dahlin lottery might even bring enough of a jolt to knock them out of their gloomy state, and put the wind back in their sails, like Devil's fans say the lottery win did for their team last year.

The fact that they finally caught a break could be culture-changing itself. At least to some extent. I know I'd come into the season with renewed hopes and energy.

 

[HaNotsri]

This might be the best draft to win since MacDavid? And before that? The step down between Dahlin-Svech might even be bigger than MacD-Eich in the end...

 

[Weaves]

So.. after a late night of celebratory drinking I woke up a few minutes ago.. thought to myself, "man i had the craziest dream last night, that the Sabres actually won Dahlin". Turned on Twitter and imagine my excitement for the second time that it was totally real life. Amazing.

 

[Zman5778]

Was at my "local" golf range where they were having a demo day. Of course to celebrate last night I was repping my Sabres cap.

Went over to the Taylor Made tent and tried their M3 irons (meh). About halfway through my testing, the Taylor Made rep comes over.

Him: "You like the Sabres?"
Me: "Yeah, born and raised in Buffalo"
Him: "You lucky bastards"

........I purchased Mizunos.

 

[Woodhouse]

If they're going to have a lottery, I still don't understand why they don't go for the better entertainment with lottery draw visual, updated odd/outcome graphics, reveals, etc. You would've had five markets hanging on the fourth ball reveal, as opposed to three, and then you do it at least twice more for the next picks. Quickly looking at the lookup tables, the real odds shifted something like:

• 185/1001 combos, or 18.5%
• 1 drawn, meaning 47/286 or 16.4%
• 1-4 drawn, meaning 11/65 or 16.9%
• 1-4-14 drawn, meaning 2/11 or 18.2%; also, OTT 3/11, ARZ 2/11, CHI 2/11, VAN 2/11
• 1-4-14-6 drawn, meaning 1/1 or 100%

 

[misterchainsaw]

If they're going to have a lottery, I still don't understand why they don't go for the better entertainment with lottery draw visual, updated odd/outcome graphics, reveals, etc. You would've had five markets hanging on the fourth ball reveal, as opposed to three, and then you do it at least twice more for the next picks. Quickly looking at the lookup tables, the real odds shifted something like:

• 185/1001 combos, or 18.5%
• 1 drawn, meaning 47/286 or 16.4%
• 1-4 drawn, meaning 11/65 or 16.9%
• 1-4-14 drawn, meaning 2/11 or 18.2%; also, OTT 3/11, ARZ 2/11, CHI 2/11, VAN 2/11
• 1-4-14-6 drawn, meaning 1/1 or 100%

I agree. Just use the overlay that they use for poker. You can run it on a bit of a tape delay so you'e not calculating odds on the fly, and this way all 15 franchises (well, 14 this year cause of a trade) are engaged for all 3 picks.

 

[bluedevil58]

Canes fan here. Congrats on the 1st! Canes have a solid blue line. They need a solid winger. What are the chances you guys don't draft Dahlin?

 

[La Cosa Nostra]

Canes fan here. Congrats on the 1st! Canes have a solid blue line. They need a solid winger. What are the chances you guys don't draft Dahlin?

Absolutely ZERO. He is the McDavid of dmen and I never bothered penciling him in or expecting him because we never are lucky enough for this. Imagine what Edmonton would want for Eichel/#2... and Eichel is>>>Svechnikov.


Honestly Slavin+#2+ just for starters.

 

[5 Minute Major]

Canes fan here. Congrats on the 1st! Canes have a solid blue line. They need a solid winger. What are the chances you guys don't draft Dahlin?

What are the chances the Sabres don’t draft Dahlin?

Serious physical injury, death or a serious Felony arrest would be the only ones that come to mind.

 

[Zman5778]

Canes fan here. Congrats on the 1st! Canes have a solid blue line. They need a solid winger. What are the chances you guys don't draft Dahlin?

Unless something catastrophic happens to Dahlin between now and then......the chances are ZERO that we don't draft Dahlin.

 

[Woodhouse]

I mean, THIS was what the Swedish scout was saying in February, and I'm sure there's probably an updated version seeking quotes coming soon following the lottery results.

 

[bluedevil58]

My fear is the Sabres don't draft him. Hence my question. Thanks all.

 

[tsujimoto74]

Canes fan here. Congrats on the 1st! Canes have a solid blue line. They need a solid winger. What are the chances you guys don't draft Dahlin?

What are the chances Dahlin gets in a catastrophic accident between now and the draft, ruining his ability to ever play hockey again? That number.