Last season I ran a monthly column called “31 Stats,” a homage to Elliotte Friedman’s excellent “31 Thoughts” where I would run through 31 analytical tidbits from the month. That’s … a lot of numbers which led to some hefty word counts. This year we’re changing up the format, and the frequency. Welcome to “16 Stats,” (like 16 playoff teams, get it?) a feature that will run bi-weekly on Thursdays.



It’s been a strange couple of weeks to open the NHL season. That’s par for the course when small sample sizes run amok leading to some wacky early standings results.



Through the early going the Buffalo Sabres are off to a roaring 5-1-1 start, and are currently sitting above Boston, Toronto and Tampa Bay atop the Atlantic division. Not a single soul likely suspected that at any point this season.



Usually, in those cases, there’s a tendency to write off any surprising success story...