Calgary Flames center Sean Monahan joined the list of injured players withdrawing from the upcoming World Cup of Hockey.Monahan, 21, will be replaced on the roster by Florida Panthers forward Vincent Trocheck, Team North America announced Friday.Monahan suffered a back strain while training, according to Flames general manager Brad Treliving. The injury isnt a long-term concern, Treliving said, and Monahan is expected to be ready for the start of the Flames training camp.Trocheck, 23, is coming off a breakthrough season with the Panthers, registering 25 goals in 76 games last season.Monahan joins a list of injured World Cup players who have recently withdrawn from the competition, including Blackhawks defenseman Duncan Keith, Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall, Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg and Kings forward Jeff Carter.Wholesale Air Max 1 . Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek defeated Nenad Zimonjic and Ilija Bozoljac 6-2, 6-4, 7-6 (4) on the indoor hard-court at Belgrade Arena. 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He had a goal and two assists for a career-high three points as Columbus beat the New York Islanders 5-2 to snap a five-game losing streak.Game 7, 2016 NBA Finals: Kyrie Irving with a game winner. Reigning two-time MVP Stephen Curry against four-time MVP LeBron James. Clevelands curse vs. the Golden Boys of 73 wins. At one point 44.5 million people were watching LeBron vs. Steph, and the game had an average TV rating of 15.7, the highest-rated NBA game since Michael Jordans final championship dagger against the Jazz in 1998. The intrigue, storylines, and brands of the teams and players were just as captivating as the game itself. It was must-see TV.April 5, 2010, NCAA title game: Gordon Hayward comes within inches of giving Butler a national championship instead of Duke. The stars? Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack vs. Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler. Over 48 million people tuned in to at least part of a game featuring the school from Indiana, with less than 5,000 students enrolled full time, yet their final game in the 2010 season against Duke drew a 15.0 average TV rating. At the time, this was a better rating than any NBA game since 2002, and not much worse than college footballs 2010 BCS National Championship between Alabama and Texas (17.2 rating).Wait, what? How does a college sporting event featuring two teams with combined undergraduate enrollment under 11,000 outperform any game of its professional counterpart for the previous seven years? How did only 2 percent more households that same year watch the football equivalent featuring Texas and Alabama?Fall may have just begun, but for college basketball fans, March cant come soon enough. Football may be Americas game, and baseball is Americas pastime. What is college basketball? I like to call it the proud owner of the title Americas Tournament. While more people in the U.S. would rather watch football than basketball on a Thursday night, when the calendar turns to March, that gap nearly vanishes.Fans love the Cinderella, at least one of which appears in the NCAA tournament seemingly every year. George Mason, Butler, VCU and Wichita State -- all are from smaller conferences and made it to the Final Four with an 8-seed or higher in the last 11 years. No other major college or professional sport can consistently produce teams that make the unexpected happen as often as the NCAA tournament. Why?I conjecture it has to do with three main reasons:? The size of the field? Single elimination? Mis-seedingField of 68The first couple years of the College Football Playoff have been a great success. The regular season is under increased scrutiny, and youre guaranteed to get four very good teams in the playoff even if not everyone agrees they are definitely the four best. First, lets settle the obvious. The teams that make the field of 68 arent the best 68 teams in the sport. Unlike football, there is intrigue that all 351 Division I teams players control their own destiny to the national championship. Some teams way outside the best 68 in the country make the tournament. Some may argue this makes the NCAA tournament watered-down, but that couldnt be further from the truth.Although 68 teams make the tournament, in a given year generally 40-45 of those make the NCAA tournament as an at-large, which is the top 11-13 percent of all teams (19 percent of all teams make the tournament including the automatic qualifiers). This actually creates a more even playing field. Compare that to the NBA and NHL (the top 53 percent of teams make the playoffs), MLB (top 33 percent) and NFL (top 37.5 percent). If the top 40 percent of teams were in the NCAA tournament in 2016, according to ESPNs Basketball Power Index (BPI), that would have put High Point and Northeastern, teams few casual fans are familiar with, among the final teams in the field.The 2010-11 VCU Rams were an 11th-seeded at-large team and thus were considered among the top 45 teams in the country, according to the selection committee. This means they were among the top 13 percent of all the teams in the country. For a financial comparison, what kind of salary would put someone in the top 13 percent? According to the U.S. Census in 2014, the top 13 percent oof household incomes in the United States were at $145,000 per year or more.dddddddddddd Is the NCAA tournament watered-down? Its as watered-down as a country club that requires a household income of at least $145,000 to join. There may be some weaker competition in the highest seeds of the NCAA tournament bracket, but mostly it is a tournament for the basketball-rich.]Survive and advanceLets consider a few examples that may demonstrate how survive-or-go-home games increase the chances of weaker teams winning, and by extension the excitement of the tournament.Team A has a 61 percent chance to beat Team B on a neutral court. Suppose both teams get a 4 percent bump for playing at home. In a seven-game series, with Team A having home-court advantage, the probability is that Team A has a 74 percent to win the series. In a win-or-go-home, single-game elimination on a neutral court, Team A will advance only 61 percent of the time. The NCAA tournament gives weaker teams a much better chance at advancing than the NBA playoffs. Lets say teams seeded No. 13 or higher have, on average, a 7 percent chance to win a round-of-64 game. Whats the chance that at least one of them will win? The answer is 72 percent. Going back to 2002, only twice in 15 years has no team seeded 13 or higher advanced to the round of 32.Contrast this with the opening-round series in the NBA, which feature a best-of-seven format. In the past five seasons, only one team out of 20 (5 percent) among the bottom quarter of playoff teams (seeds 7 or 8) advanced past the first round (the Philadelphia 76ers upended the Chicago Bulls in 2012). In the NCAA tournament, 12 teams out of 80 (15 percent) in the bottom quarter of tourney teams (seeds 13-16) advanced out of the first round. This, of course, is a limited sample, but it demonstrates the added uncertainty and therefore excitement a single-game, win-or-go-home scenario creates.Maybe winning one game doesnt make team a Cinderella, but winning two or more does. In 2016, BPI expected an average of 2.3 teams seeded 9-16 to make the Sweet 16. In the NCAA tournament, unlike college football, it is not a question of if a small school can win on a big stage -- it is a question of, which one?Committees human errorMost of the buzz regarding the field of 68 is about who the favorite is and who got left out, but the bigger question is, Who got mis-seeded? The committee doesnt mis-seed as much when analyzing a teams resume as it does when analyzing a teams actual strength. A team may have a weak resume due to bad luck in a few games and still be one of the stronger teams in the country. BPI accounts for strength, and very often a team is much stronger than it appears.Take, for example, Mr. Davidson 2008, Stephen Curry. His team was awarded a No. 10 seed, presumably because it was in a weaker conference and glaringly had seven nonconference losses. The context of those seven, how close the games were, and where the games were played are crucial context to evaluate how good a team is. Three of those losses were to UNC, Duke and UCLA, all very good teams that season, and another was to ACC school NC State. BPI saw that the Wildcats were the 15th-best team in the nation heading into the tournament that year, a far cry from the 10th-seeded lens most people saw them through. While the 15th-best team isnt expected to be in the Elite Eight, it shouldnt be a surprise when they are.Combine having a relatively small percentage of the top teams making the tournament, the randomness that occurs from having only one game to play each round, and the perceived strength of the team sometimes being much different than reality, and you get a lot of excitement and a lot of madness. Will there be a Cinderella in the tournament? A double-digit seed in the Final Four? A small school making a name for itself? Its happened before and it will surely happen again. When? Odds-on favorite is six months from now. ' ' '
