FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, January 16, 2022 [1. The Colorado Avalanche Are The Greatest Show On Ice]( [Anaheim Ducks v Colorado Avalanche]( Few hockey players fit the superstar archetype as well as Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon. Over the past five seasons, MacKinnon trails only the Edmonton Oilers’ dynamic duo of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in scoring, and no one has him beat in total MVP votes. When healthy this season, MacKinnon has kept producing at a high level so far. Though he has missed 10 games between a positive COVID-19 test and a subsequent lower-body injury, MacKinnon leads the NHL in assists per game and is on pace for a career-best 1.52 points per contest. [Read more]( [2. Ohio’s Overturned Congressional Map Shows How Lawsuits Might Scramble Redistricting]( [OH-MAP-REJECTED-4×3]( Twenty-six states have now gone through the process of drawing and approving new congressional districts, but at least nine of those states were slapped with lawsuits on the grounds that the approved maps are gerrymandered or otherwise illegal. And in a potential sign of things to come, the first of these maps was overturned today. [Read more]( [3. Why You Can’t See The Most Important Omicron Hot Spots In The U.S. On A Map]( [COVID-HOTSPOTS-4×3]( When the delta variant swept through the Southern U.S. in summer 2021, the hot spots were easy enough to see. Huge swaths of red in Florida, Louisiana and Alabama swelled on COVID-19 tracker maps, like stop lights warning travelers to avoid the region. [Read more]( [4. When Should You Break Up With A Quarterback? Asking For The Cleveland Browns.]( [Baker Mayfield]( When is the right time to break up with someone if you’re fairly sure they just aren’t for you? Some might argue it’s best to act quickly and decisively when you suspect there’s no long-term future for the relationship. Others might look past the red flags and preach patience: Things may not have been perfect up to now, but perhaps your partner can change. [Read more]( [5. One Year In, Biden’s Approval Rating Is In Trouble — Only Trump’s Was Lower]( [A photo illustration of Joe Biden against a gridded background]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [6. Politics Podcast: How Likely Is Another Civil War?]( [ElectionsPodcast-4:3]( In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, academics and journalists have increasingly taken seriously the possibility of more political violence in the U.S. And polls suggest Americans are worried about this too. In a December University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll, 62 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat concerned about violence in the 2024 presidential election. [Read more]( [7. The Bengals May Be The Real Winner Of ‘The Tie That Wasn’t’]( [Kansas City Chiefs v Cincinnati Bengals]( Twitter was rooting for Las Vegas to end its 2021 regular season on Sunday with a quarterback kneel and tie, but the Raiders had a business decision to make: Tie, and open the playoffs against the No. 2 seed Kansas City Chiefs, who’ve outscored them 89-23 this season? Or win and face the No. 4 seed Cincinnati Bengals? [Read more]( [8. The Steelers And Raiders Shouldn’t Still Be Playing. How Long Can They Keep This Up?]( [Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers]( Advanced football analysis indicates that it’s difficult to make the playoffs while allowing more points than you score. Prior to this year, 564 teams had made the playoffs since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, and just 46 (8.2 percent) did it with a negative point differential. Of those, just 10 allowed regular-season opponents to outscore them by more than 3 points per game. The standout teams in this category are 2010 Seattle Seahawks (-6.06 points per game) and 2011 Denver Broncos (-5.06), who together set a new bar in winning while being outscored. [Read more]( [9. The Supreme Court’s Right Turn Goes Way Beyond Guns And Abortion]( [SCOTUS-OVERVIEW-4×3]( When former President Donald Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee was confirmed in 2020, cementing the most conservative majority on the court since the 1930s, it wasn’t clear which conservative goals the justices would tackle first. Culture-war issues like abortion, gun rights, affirmative action and religious liberty were obvious possibilities, but issues with a more subtle impact like reining in the power of the executive branch and limiting unions had long been on conservative legal advocates’ wish list, too. So the question wasn’t whether the court would move to the right — it was more a question of where they’d start. [Read more]( [10. The WNBA Free Agents Who Might Be On The Move]( [Phoenix Mercury v Las Vegas Aces – Game Two]( You might have thought that the 2021 WNBA postseason, complete with Candace Parker returning to the top with her Chicago Sky and Diana Taurasi slamming (and breaking) doors, was as dramatic as the WNBA could get. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Will Exhausted Americans Tune Out From Politics?]( Lastly, The Riddler By [Zach Wissner-Gross]( [riddler_4x3_default]( This week’s Express is a visual puzzle. Out of the 100 squares in the 10-by-10 grid below, 99 have been colored gray, yellow, green, red or blue. One square, in the top left corner, has not yet been colored. [10 by 10 grid of squares, colored gray, yellow, green, blue and red. The top-left most square contains a question mark.] What color should this final square be? Should it be gray, yellow, green, red, or blue, or perhaps another color entirely? (If you’re not sure how to get started here, you might want to check in with a few mathematicians by the names of Pingala, Hemachandra and Fibonacci.) [Solve it!]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 47 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023.