Every year I put out the Trade Rumor Chart towards the end of December every year. To make The Chart as accurate as possible requires a ton of conversations with sources and research. There are so many factors that play into whether a team is interested in becoming a buyer or a seller, but the one thing I know for certain…If you know who the buyers and sellers are...you know a lot. It isn’t easy tracking rumors on 30 teams, so the better I know the buyers and sellers the more efficient I can be with who I talk to...
I have developed a formula over the years to help in this determination, and this year I decided I am going to include the buyers and seller quotient into the conversation by doing a weekly look at how they stack up. There are currently 12 factors I use to determine the likelihood of a team becoming a buyer or a seller and those factors include:
*Points a team is out of or in the playoffs *How many teams a team must pass, or yield to, in order to make or not make the playoffs *Team Goal differential (goal differential often tells you more than the standings. It is incredibly rare for a team with a positive goal differential to miss the playoffs and even more rare for a team with a negative differential to make it. *Cap Space *Pending Free Agents *Marketplace/Expectations…
And of course some more secret sauce thrown in…
I have developed the system so that a team with a negative value is more likely a seller and a team with a positive is more likely a buyer…By doing this I have come up with what I call “The Buyer/Seller Line.… This line tells me if the market is a buyer or a seller market based on how many buyers and sellers there are…
So without any more delay, here it is for the Eastern Conference as of this morning…
Ek’s Buyer Seller Rating for the Eastern Conference..
VERY Strong Buyers: #1. Montreal 45.05 #2. NY Rangers 40.7 #3 Columbus 40.65
Strong Buyers #4 Pittsburgh 36 #5 Washington 20.75
Likely Buyers #6 Philadelphia 18.5 #7 Ottawa 15.8 #8 Boston 15.1
Possible Buyers #9 Tampa 2.2
*****BUYER SELLER LINE******
Possible Sellers #10 Florida -5.95 #11 NJ -8.9
Likely Sellers #12 Toronto -10.5 #13 Carolna -12.75 #14 Detroit -14.5
Strong Sellers #15 NY Islanders -20.2
Very Strong Sellers #16 Buffalo -31.1
So currently we have 9 buyers and 7 sellers…That makes the East a “sellers market..…
Whats the buzz? *What do you think? *Is my system accurate in your opinion? *Is it even possible to use stats to determine who buyers and sellers are? *Do you want your team to be a buyer or a seller?
Next up…Who are the Buyers and Sellers in the West?
We will discuss all this and more on todays Buzzcast at 1pm.
HockeyBuzzcast w/@Eklund, @sportsology & @MikeInBuffalo available on #iTunes https://t.co/yXakLaiyRy & TuneIn https://t.co/Yqbm5JmlvM #NHL
— Michael Augello (@MikeInBuffalo) December 12, 2016