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Saturday: The Points You’ve Blown and the Record You Need

Posted on by Daws Butler

The Good: Stars lose, Ducks lose, Blues lose.
The Bad: Kings lose, Yotes win, Avs win, Sharks win.

The point being…

Two points separate the 3-6 teams, VAN, LAK, PHX and COL. Nashville is still equidistant from that group and the lower cluster of DET/CGY/MIN/DAL/STL/ANA, which is bunched together in a 5-point range, as they have been for quite awhile. I feel like the DET cluster is creeping closer to the LAK cluster, but I would have to check that out; could just be paranoia on my part.
Here are the standings*:

  1. San Jose Sharks 37 (1) +11
  2. Chicago Blackhawks 37 (2) +11
  3. Vancouver Canucks 48 (3) 0
  4. Los Angeles Kings 48 (4) —
  5. Phoenix Coyotes 49 (5) -1
  6. Colorado Avalanche 50 (6) -2
  7. Nashville Predators 53 (7) -5
  8. Detroit Red Wings 56 (8) -8
  9. Calgary Flames 57 (9) -9
  10. Minnesota Wild 59 (13) -11
  11. Dallas Stars 60 (10) -12
  12. St. Louis Blues 61 (12) -13
  13. Anaheim Ducks 61 (11) -13
  14. Columbus Blue Jackets 69 (14) -21
  15. Edmonton Oilers 82 (15) -36

And here’s the record each team needs from here on, to get to the assumed (by me) magical point total of 95. One of the fun side-effects of this list is that it’s kind of like a budget. The record your team needs is like a budget of how many wins, losses and half-losses you have left to spend. The Kings, for example, lost tonight, and so “spent” one of their losses in the list below. The number of losses they can afford from now on is reduced by one. Nice.

  1. San Jose Sharks 1-16-0
  2. Chicago Blackhawks 2-16-0
  3. Phoenix Coyotes 6-10-0
  4. Los Angeles Kings 7-10-1
  5. Vancouver Canucks 7-10-1
  6. Colorado Avalanche 7-9-1
  7. Nashville Predators 10-8-0
  8. Detroit Red Wings 11-6-1
  9. Calgary Flames 12-6-0
  10. St. Louis Blues 13-5-0
  11. Dallas Stars 13-4-1
  12. Minnesota Wild 14-5-0
  13. Anaheim Ducks 14-4-0
  14. Columbus Blue Jackets 17-0-0
  15. Edmonton Oilers

*standings in points-blown explained: two points “awarded” for every loss, one point for every OTL/SOL. Lowest point total is best. Number in parentheses is the official standings (via ESPN). Last number (+/-) is number of points (in my system) ahead or behind Los Angeles. Because it’s a Kings-centric universe.

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