My Fellow Nerds and I Will Retire to the Nerdery With Our Calculators

It was a rough morning around my house.

Last night started at the Sox game and ended at a law student kegger in Allston, MA. There were a lot of things that took place in between but lets just say drinking was a focal point.

For whatever reason, this hangover got me thinking about statistics. Maybe it was the Beer-aide served out of a plastic bag lined cardboard box, maybe it was how I angry I got about the guy with dual-popped polo collars (Duke colors, too - this was no accident), I don't know.

In any case I went over to Puck Prospectus and started checking out some of their predictions for the year. They just came out with the season previews for all 30 teams - including, of course, your Bruins.

Take a look at the defense:

          2009-2010 VUKOTA Projections

Name            Age  GP     G     A    Pts   GVT
Dennis Wideman  26  77.0  10.9  34.4  45.2  12.7
Zdeno Chara     32  73.8  12.2  33.8  46.1  12.6
Matt Hunwick    24  57.2   6.3  19.9  26.2   7.2
Derek Morris    31  64.7   4.5  15.5  20.0   4.8
Mark Stuart     25  66.6   3.4  10.6  14.0   3.9
Andrew Ference  30  51.4   2.5  12.9  15.5   3.2
Johnny Boychuk  25  27.9   1.6   5.3   6.9   1.4

I've altered the table slightly to fit in this space, but the last stat on the right is Goals Versus Threshold (explained here). It's similar to VORP in baseball and attempts to put a number on how much better any given player is than a replacement.

So Wide-Man projects to be just as valuable as Chara in 2009, at least according to this metric. We'll certainly see how the whole thing shakes out. He's got the talent and if he can stay consistent and healthy then I don't see why he can't build on last year's success.

Like all projections, it's just that, an educated guess. Perhaps the nerds won't win. Perhaps I won't drink Beer-aide out of a garbage bag lined box. It's really all up in the air at this point.

Check out the season preview and projection article on the Bruins, lot's of great stuff in there, as usual. In any case, we've got a big revenge game against the Canes tonight. Remember Scott Walker?