Building on the original concept discussed here, I updated the spreadsheet to allow for the comparison of three teams.
Here is the scenario:
You have 2 centers already, say Eric Staal and Scott Gomez, and you want to know who you should target as your third center to minimize the number of days those teams play on the same day. The answer is if you draft Olli Jokinen you will have 34 days when all three teams (Hurricanes, Rangers and Coyotes) play on the same night. However, if you drop a little down your draft list and pick Jonathan Toews you will only have 16 days when all three teams play on the same day. So who would you rather have Jokinen for 48 games or Toews for 66? Interesting implications.
Now my challenge is to find a way to share this tool with all you guys. The Google Documents worked for posting results of comparing every 2 teams but if comparing 3 teams there are way too many combinations to post a results table (if my old math doesn’t fail me there are 24,360 combinations of teams to look at). So I need to find a way to publish the spreadsheet in a way that people can download the file, formulas intact and change it at home for endless fun. Anyone have any ideas? Maybe you can do this with google but I didn\'t see how.
I think what might work best is if someone knows a easy place to set up a free webpage where I could post a few excel files for download. I typed ‘free webpage’ into Google and was a little overwhelmed so I was hoping for a real person to point me in the right direction instead.
As a teaser, here is another result. If you have an Ottawa and Detroit player where best to get that third player?
Rank Team Games in Conflict
1 Bruins 35
2 Sharks 34
3 Kings 33
4 Flyers 32
5 Wild 30
6 Thrashers 30
7 Devils 30
8 Coyotes 30
9 Canadiens 30
10 Sabres 29
11 Penguins 29
12 Panthers 29
13 Maple Leafs 29
14 Blues 29
15 Stars 28
16 Lightning 28
17 Islanders 28
18 Capitals 28
19 Oilers 26
20 Hurricanes 26
21 Flames 26
22 Blackhawks 26
23 Rangers 25
24 Predators 25
25 Blue Jackets 25
26 Canucks 23
27 Avalanche 23
28 Ducks 20
As I had mentioned before the Ducks seem to play more often on ‘off nights’ than any other teams so often when comparing two teams, they are more often than not the third team in least conflict.