Hello everyone! And welcome back to By The Numbers. Right off the bat, thank you to everyone who checked out last week's blog. I know it was a little wordy, but I had to make sure everyone was up to speed. This one will take me forever to write due to the fact that my new rescue dog, Calvin, is very clingy and me escaping to my office was a big no-no. He is a beagle mix; and judging by his bark, the only internal organs he possesses are lungs. But I digress…

The questions I most commonly get asked about what I do with this blog is, “What does it all mean?” “Based on these numbers, what do I think will happen this weekend?” and my personal favorite, “How is Team A ranked higher than Team B, when Team A has a better record?”.

What does it all mean? It means this is what has happened so far. A log of games that have already been played. And how the times in those games added up. This is by no means a why question, but how. You can look at a final score and say that’s why that team won, they scored more goals. But how did they win? Did they take an early lead and hold it the entire game? Did they trail most of the game, but scored late? As I’ve said before, this is just a different way of looking at it.

And you can’t predict outcomes with these stats. But you can see tendencies after so many games. Last weekend, I figured that Muskegon would likely score first, and early, and Youngstown would have to come back, and would possibly win. Why? Because that was what happened to Muskegon in 4 of the previous 6 games. They scored first, held leads, and lost leads late. And that’s what happened. Friday was the first time all season they scored first and won the game, and that was in a shootout.

As far as how teams are ranked, first off, nothing is rigged. I don’t have the time. The rankings are just how the numbers stacked up. If your team has a good record and is 5th in time lead, keep looking. Their amount of time tied will probably be up, as well as time trailed. If every other game you play goes to overtime, that’s eating into a team’s lead time. Again, it’s not the why, it’s the how.

So, HOW about we see what the Phantoms season chart looks like after last weekend?

This was one of those fun weekends that happen every once in a while. The Phantoms had a shootout loss and a win over Muskegon. 3 out of 4 points. And they led for a grand total of 1:57 out of 125 minutes played. So what’s the story? Muskegon couldn’t put either game away, and the play of the Phantoms defense and goalie Kyle Chauvette kept the team in both games. And Saturday was a milestone game in that it was the first time this season that the Phantoms won after not scoring the first goal. They trailed both games, but came back to get 3 points. This was a major issue last season, so showing this mettle early in the season is a great sign for this team.

So this weekend, we have the Madison Capitols returning to Youngstown for the first time since January 5th, 2020. And since returning to the league this season, the MadCaps have been a wrecking ball, nipping on Chicago’s heels for 1st in the East. Below, you’ll see how their season has shaped up so far.

After a lackluster start at the Fall Classic, Madison has rattled off 9 wins in the 10 games since, only going to overtime twice in that stretch. And they’ve won every way. They have scored early and often, they’ve played in tight back and forth games, and they’ve had to come from behind. The Phantoms are riding a wave of momentum where almost all of their game stats are improving. While the Capitols did get two out of three wins over Green Bay, who has been fairly average this season, they had to work a lot harder than in recent history to do so.

Let’s hope that the Phantoms' recent surge will lead to a much better weekend than the last time these two teams met. Speaking of which, let’s take a glance at the season series between the Phantoms & Capitols so far.

Yeah, no analysis needed here.

So to wrap this up, here are the Season Rankings as of this week. The season is still young-ish, so a great weekend or a terrible weekend can bounce some percentages around, but that will happen when you update this every week. Thanks for reading along! See you all next week!