Less than 24 hours after allowing a late lead to slip away before losing in overtime, the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night will face a stiff test at Prudential Center from one of the NHLs top teams.The Tampa Bay Lightning, who have won five of seven to start the season and enjoyed a day off Friday while the Devils were losing to the Chicago Blackhawks 3-2, erased a 2-0 deficit in their first meeting with the Devils on Oct. 15 and earned a 3-2 regulation win.The Lightning have one thing working against them heading into this matchup -- right winger Nikita Kucherov is listed as day-to-day after suffering an injury in a 2-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday. It was feared the injury could be serious, so even if he misses Fridays game against New Jersey, it still feels like the Lightning dodged a bullet.Its never fun to see guys not finishing games, defenseman Victor Hedman said to the Tampa Bay Times. Well see what the status is. Guys have an opportunity to step up and play more minutes. Weve been through this before. Thats what weve been known for the last few years, guys step up when other guys do down.The Lightning reached the Eastern Conference Finals last season without Stamkos for all but Game 7 of that series. They are one of the deepest teams in the league and can certainly survive a game or two without Kucherov, who has averaged nearly 30 goals per season over the past two seasons.The Lightning also have a wealth of goaltenders with Ben Bishop and Andrei Vasilevskiy in net.Bishop was a Vezina Trophy finalist last season and Vasilevskiy played well in his absence when he got hurt during the past two postseasons. Bishop played in Montreal on Thursday despite having his teeth knocked out in the previous game, so either goalie could get the nod against the Devils.In the time Ive been here, I dont think Ive ever sat here and said, This goalie is playing this way and I decide not to play him, Lightning coach Jon Cooper said to the Tampa Bay Times. Over time the last couple years with Vasy, weve tried to slowly put him in. Were trying to get him minimum one game a week.The Devils have a workhorse No. 1 goaltender in Cory Schneider who will be between the pipes after getting a night off for the first time this season against the Blackhawks. Schneider is off to another stellar start with a 2.00 goals-against average and .936 save percentage in six starts.The problem for the Devils continues to be scoring; in seven games, theyve only cracked the two-goal mark once.Against the Blackhawks, two goals appeared to be enough before right winger Marian Hossa scored late to force overtime and center Artem Anisimov won it.Devils coach John Hynes was upset with his teams decision making in the third period and overtime, something he wants fixed before the Lightning take the ice Saturday.We have to move past this one, Hynes said. We have to extract (the lesson). Thats really what I said tonight. The beauty of playing back to back is you have an opportunity to redeem yourself. Well take the lessons from this game and make sure we come out with a competitive effort like we did tonight and we got to get that smart part of our game in key situations to match our level of compete.Its a long season, and I think were going to get better at protecting leads and playing with leads, Devils left winger Taylor Hall said to NJ.com. Its not something that Im worried about. We can get a little more comfortable in those situations. Erick Aybar Jersey . No. 13-seeded John Isner and No. 21 Philipp Kohlschreiber were among six players who dropped out of the tournament on Tuesday, joining No. 12 seed Tommy Haas and two other players who withdrew on Monday. Randy Jones Jersey .J. -- Josh Cribbs was in the Pro Bowl in February and out of a job six months later. http://www.authenticpadrespgear.com/padres-tony-gwynn-jersey/ . Gerald Green and Miles Plumlee? Green had bounced around the NBA when he wasnt playing overseas. The Pacers gave up on Plumlee after just one season. Now Green and Plumlee are key cogs in the Suns surprising breakout season. Rollie Fingers Jersey .ca look back at each of the Top 10 stories of 2013. Today, we look back at Boston Strong - a citys recovery from tragedy. Wil Myers Jersey . Francis told several hundred members of the European Olympic Committees that when sport "is considered only in economic terms and consequently for victory at every cost . On Sunday mornings in November, before he heads to Dallas for the weekly College Football Playoff selection committee meetings, Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez crunches numbers in his office at Kellner Hall. Alvarez sits at his desk using the iPad the CFP gave him, and compiles a draft of his top 30 teams.Along with the help of basketball sports information director Patrick Herb, who for a third straight year will assist Alvarez with CFP statistics, Alvarez has prioritized six categories he feels best indicate a championship-caliber team.His most dependable metrics are shared only within the closed-door meeting room, but one of them is strength of schedule.Its so important, because not all stats are created equal when you compare bodies of work, Herb said. That has to be a part of your evaluation and a big part of your evaluation.Its one of the most frequently mentioned metrics used to explain the Tuesday night rankings, which begin Nov. 1, but its also one of the most subjective and debatable. There are fans who crave more, wanting the committees strength of schedule formula spelled out in detail, but its impossible because the interpretation of it is left to each individual committee member -- and each typically uses about four to five variations of it.Were all aware of how each of them are calculated and what the differences are within those, said committee chair Kirby Hocutt. We have all the metrics in front of us, and how we choose to interpret that particular one is up to each persons own discretion.The most elementary, public interpretation is given on Tuesday nights when the committee rewards teams that have earned the most wins against opponents ranked in the committees top 25, and wins against teams with records above .500, but the debates in the room span almost two days and go deeper. With three new committee members in the room this year -- former Central Michigan coach Herb Deromedi, former Southern Miss coach Jeff Bower, and Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens -- the committees collective view on strength of schedule will have different opinions this fall.Still, theyre all given the same information.No one relies exclusively on any kind of a metric, said CFP executive director Bill Hancock. The metrics for anyone who crunches the numbers in that way is a starting point, but thats all it is. Filling in the details to create the story of each team is what the committee does. Those details that the committee discusses could never be captured in a single number.Strength of schedule is alsoo one of the tiebreakers the committee must consider when ranking comparable teams, along with championships won, head-to-head results, and outcomes against common opponents (without promoting margin of victory).dddddddddddd The committee members are free to use statistics outside of those provided by SportSource Analytics (the data company the CFP has a contract with) -- as long as they understand where they come from and how theyre compiled.Alvarez uses a formula developed by Michigan State director of basketball operations Kevin Pauga, who developed KPIsports.net as an undergrad in 2003. His data is used by the basketball selection committee as a complement to RPI. His strength of schedule formula tries to account for everything you can quantify in terms of what makes one game more difficult than another while eliminating human bias.Playing a good team on the road versus playing them at home, its two different things, so just going straight by opponent winning percentages is limited, Pauga said. Beyond opponent winning percentage, if youre factoring in the location of the game, the strength of your opponents record, I think we can all agree not all 8-4s have the same meaning to them. Its digging deeper than win-loss records.The committee is given 128 team sheets in their playoff binder, filled with data from SportSource Analytics on offense, defense, special teams and schedule strength. The latter is broken down into 10 different opponent categories, such as opponents opponents records, including opponents losses to FCS teams. They can also quickly learn from the sheet the number of wins against Current CFP Top 25 teams, and a teams record against Power 5 opponents and also Group of 5 opponents.Hancock said none of the committee members rely solely on the data provided by SportSource Analytics. The committee analyzes teams against each other in groups of six or eight, so a strength of schedule ranking from 1-128 is irrelevant to them unless there is a huge discrepancy.Its much easier to evaluate and compare and dig deeply into the details when youre only evaluating six or eight teams against each other, Hancock said. ... They can look at it and say, You know, they played the team that is second in the division and has played well all season and they played them on the road at night and won. No metric can evaluate strength of schedule to that level of detail like the committee can. 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