A new year means the return of the points-blown standings. I’ve been getting a lot of requests for these (most of which are along the lines of “WTF!”). I know some of you hate them. That’s fine. There are enough standings variations in the world to keep everyone happy. My own, which I call points-blown (or points-squandered) simply corrects for games-played by focusing entirely on points you didn’t get in the games you’ve played. A loss is two points-blown. An OTL/SOL is one point-blown.
“But why don’t you just sort by W%? Isn’t that easier?”
It’s easier, but it doesn’t tell me what I want to know, which is, how many games does team x (ahead of me in the standings) have to lose before we’re even. For example, Nashville has a W% of .595. The Kings are at .569. What’s that 2 and 3/5ths percent worth in the standings? What do the Kings need to do to catch up? I can’t picture .026 in the standings. So, choose among:
- Nashville is .026 ahead of the Kings.
- Nashville is one point ahead of the Kings, with a game in hand.
- Nashville is three points-blown ahead of the Kings. /
KEY:
- Q is my standings, default sorted by points-blown (explanation of points-blown here).
- NHL is the official standings, via NHL.COM.
- PRJ is projected point total for 82 games.
- TO 98 is the record needed to get to the presumed (by me) playoff-threshold. I’m trying to be conservative. It could be 95-97 points.
- PB is points-blown.
- 8th+/- is the distance in points-blown above or below the 8th seed.
- LA+/- is the distance in points-blown between that team and the Kings.
- GD is goal-differential.
- GP is games-played.
- OSR is “old school record”, in which all ties after regulation are treated as ties. One point.
- OSP is “old school points”.
- Qcl is clustered points, which corrects for variance in games-played and then rounds point totals to the nearest multiple of 5. The idea is to emphasize which teams are bunched together, or, to put it another way, are “more or less tied.” It may be useless or annoying. Feel free to ignore.
Click on the headers to sort.
[I just noticed that the site needs to be set to “wide” view in the right margin of the page, in order for the chart not to get mangled]
| Q | NHL | W/L/OTL | PTS | W% | PRJ | to 98 | PB | 8th+/- | LA+- | GD | GP | OSR | OSP | Qcl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | SJS | 23-11-5 | 51 | 0.6538 | 107.2 | 21-16-6 | 27 | 9 | 10 | 22 | 39 | 18-14-7 | 43 | 55 |
| 2 | 2 | STL | 25-12-5 | 55 | 0.6548 | 107.4 | 19-16-5 | 29 | 7 | 8 | 21 | 42 | 25-12-5 | 55 | 55 |
| 3 | 1 | VAN | 27-14-3 | 57 | 0.6477 | 106.2 | 18-15-5 | 31 | 5 | 6 | 36 | 44 | 25-14-5 | 55 | 55 |
| 4 | 4 | CHI | 25-13-5 | 55 | 0.6395 | 104.9 | 19-15-5 | 31 | 5 | 6 | 14 | 43 | 21-15-7 | 49 | 55 |
| 5 | 5 | DET | 26-15-1 | 53 | 0.6310 | 103.5 | 20-15-5 | 31 | 5 | 6 | 36 | 42 | 25-16-1 | 51 | 55 |
| 6 | 6 | NAS | 23-15-4 | 50 | 0.5952 | 97.6 | 22-14-4 | 34 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 42 | 20-18-4 | 44 | 50 |
| 7 | 9 | DAL | 23-17-1 | 47 | 0.5732 | 94.0 | 23-12-6 | 35 | 1 | 2 | -5 | 41 | 21-17-3 | 45 | 50 |
| 8 | 7 | MIN | 22-15-6 | 50 | 0.5814 | 95.3 | 22-13-4 | 36 | 0 | 1 | -4 | 43 | 17-17-9 | 43 | 50 |
| 9 | 8 | LAK | 21-15-7 | 49 | 0.5698 | 93.4 | 22-12-5 | 37 | -1 | 0 | -2 | 43 | 18-18-7 | 43 | 50 |
| 10 | 11 | PHX | 20-17-6 | 46 | 0.5349 | 87.7 | 24-11-4 | 40 | -4 | -3 | -2 | 43 | 18-20-5 | 41 | 45 |
| 11 | 10 | COL | 23-20-1 | 47 | 0.5341 | 87.6 | 23-10-5 | 41 | -5 | -4 | -9 | 44 | 16-21-7 | 39 | 45 |
| 12 | 12 | CGY | 20-19-5 | 45 | 0.5114 | 83.9 | 24-9-5 | 43 | -7 | -6 | -18 | 44 | 19-22-3 | 41 | 45 |
| 13 | 13 | EDM | 16-22-3 | 35 | 0.4268 | 70.0 | 29-6-6 | 47 | -11 | -10 | -8 | 41 | 15-22-4 | 34 | 35 |
| 14 | 14 | ANA | 13-22-6 | 32 | 0.3902 | 64.0 | 31-5-5 | 50 | -14 | -13 | -31 | 41 | 12-24-5 | 29 | 35 |
| 15 | 15 | CBJ | 11-26-5 | 27 | 0.3214 | 52.7 | 33-2-5 | 57 | -21 | -20 | -41 | 42 | 8-27-7 | 23 | 25 |