I have a general feeling that conventional wisdom is rarely wise. Rarely is this more apparent than the upcoming portion of the NHL season where we will be inundated with reports about teams "leap-frogging" one another in the battle for playoff position. While it's true that after each team has played 82 games, the point total for each team is ranked in descending order to determine which teams get in, this is not (or rather should not) be the way to determine which teams are MOST LIKELY to get in. This is all based on the very simple (yet often ignored) matter of "games played" and "games in hand."
I began REALLY utilizing this concept when calculating the Sabres' "magic number" last season but it works even without Buffalo in the driver's seat. Everyone loves the idea of a team "controlling its own destiny." So why not apply that as early as February to get a truer gauge of where a team stands with regard to the playoff race?
Each team has the potential to win the rest of its games. For that reason, my standings are based on "maximum points" rather than current point total. (Incidentally, this is also the proper theory to apply when running an NCAA pool, but I digress.)
As we get closer to the end of the season, I'll work new factors into the equation such as "head-to-head record" and "upcoming head-to-head matchups" but for now it's as simple as taking the total points a team has earned and adding it to the "potential points" left on the team's schedule.
For now, here are the standings the way I see them. Teams are listed in order of maximum points with their playoff seeds listed in the first column. (This is, of course, made necessary by the NHL's policy of granting seeds 1-3 to division winners in each conference.)
Please don't try to fight me on this as it's a lost cause. I went to war with the NHL and the Elias Sports Bureau last year regarding my calculations... and won. I concede that using my formula rather than the official standings is far less important now than it will be when we're down to the final 10-12 games or so for each team. (It's just a percentage thing... an extra 2 potential points means a lot more when there are only 20 points on the table to begin with, etc.) That said, why not get the chart started now and go from here?
Note: I just read through this entire post before, well, posting it, and I'm not in love with the way I've worded the whole thing. I'll work on that in order to make it more clear. Rest assured, however, that you're getting a better idea of what's happening by paying attention to my standings than you are by reading the official standings from the NHL. Also, I'm only doing the Eastern Conference because, to me, the Western Conference isn't worth the time it takes to keep updating this thing.)
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