crAP!

Yes, it's time for another installment of crAP! where we bust on those Fantasy Sports Gurus, the Associated Press. It's not that the good folks at AP play Fantasy, it's that their coverage of sports is based on a fantasy.

Two items from Saturday's paper for the guffaw-impaired:

Item One: "The Rangers and Canadiens, fighting for playoff positioning, staged a post-season-like show at Madison Square Garden." 

If these two clubs, or any hockey teams in any hockey league, are concerned with playoff positioning, they are, to be perfectly blunt, morons. They might be, but I suspect this is simply a matter of transference by the good journalists of the AP, who have managed not to notice the signature 30-year trend in the NHL.

The correlation in the NHL between playoff seeding and results in the playoffs, particularly in the first round or two, is roughly equal to the correlation with a coach's horoscope. The lowest ranked playoff team -- often a sorry squad that wins less than it doesn't -- has defeated the top-ranked team a third of the time since the '79 expansion. The gap in playoff performance between sixth and seventh seeds, which Montreal and New York currently occupy, is the difference between Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen.

More likely, the Garden rocked for a late-season tilt against a traditional rival, after a string of contests versus the likes of Ottawa, Florida and Nashville.

Item two: "It was a key win in Milwaukee's playoff push, pulling the Bucks within a game of Charlotte and the final playoff spot in the East."

Here's a little unsolicited advice for Bucks brass, which I suspect they don't need: Throw your remaining games. The reward for capturing that last playoff slot with a .412 winning percentage is playoff carnage at the hands of Chicago or Boston, winning percentage .700+. The reward for finishing ninth is a ball in the lottery for the number one, two or three draft pick and an opportunity to improve next season. Any "playoff push" by Milwaukee is more likely a lottery dive by Charlotte.

Just two more data points in the argument that sports journalism has nothing to do with the actual reality of sports.

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