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Standings

Kings Clinch: The Good, The Bad, The Real Standings

Tonight's results

The Good: KINGS WON, PHX half-lost.

The Bad: CHI won, ANA won, Kings' shoot-out win doesn't count in tie-breaker column, Kings lose season series with Phoenix because of the Bettman point.

Tomorrow's Games

COL @ DAL -- no longer quite as important to the Kings as it might have been an hour ago. Nevertheless, a Stars loss here clinches playoff berths for PHX, NAS and ANA, but not yet CHI. See "observations" after the jump for more detail on how this breaks down and why Chicago has slightly more to worry about than the others.

Now, the updated standings:

Q NHL PTS W% PRJ MAX LSF PB +/- >9th GR W! SS SSGR GD Qcl
1 1 VAN 113 0.7063 115.8 117 103 47 18 n/a 2 48 -1 VAN 71 115
2 2 SJS 103 0.6438 105.6 107 113 57 8 n/a 2 42 -2 SJS 34 105
3 3 DET 102 0.6375 104.6 106 102 58 7 n/a 2 42 3 LAK 21 100
4 4 LAK 98 0.6125 100.5 102 101 62 3 n/a 2 36 n/a n/a 24 100
5 6 PHX 97 0.6063 99.4 101 107 63 2 0-1-1 2 37 -1 PHX 6 95
6 5 NAS 97 0.6063 99.4 101 100 63 2 0-1-1 2 37 4 LAK 24 95
7 7 ANA 95 0.5938 97.4 99 89 65 0 1-1-0 2 41 1 2 1 95
8 8 CHI 95 0.5938 97.4 99 112 65 0 1-0-1 2 37 -8 CHI 32 95
9 10 DAL 91 0.5759 94.5 97 88 67 -2 3-0-0 3 35 5 LAK -7 90
10 9 CGY 93 0.5741 94.1 95 90 69 -4 n/a 1 32 2 LAK 14 90
11 11 STL 85 0.5247 86.0 87 90 77 -12 n/a 1 33 -8 STL 4 85
12 12 MIN 82 0.5190 85.1 88 84 76 -11 n/a 3 34 1 LAK -26 85
13 13 CBJ 81 0.5063 83.0 85 79 79 -14 n/a 2 29 3 LAK -39 80
14 14 COL 66 0.4177 68.5 72 95 92 -27 n/a 3 23 8 LAK -59 65
15 15 EDM 61 0.3813 62.5 65 62 99 -34 n/a 2 23 7 LAK -73 60

Click on the headers to sort.

KEY:

  • Q is my standings, default sorted by points-blown (explanation of points-blown here).
  • NHL is the official standings, via NHL.COM (ESPN has the tie-breakers wrong).
  • PRJ is projected point total for 82 games.
  • LSF is last season's final point total.
  • MAX is maximum points possible for that team.
  • PB is points-blown.
  • +/- is the distance in points-blown above or below the 8th seed.
  • >9th is the record needed to stay ahead of Dallas.
  • GR is games-remaining.
  • W! is wins plus OT wins (the first tie-breaker).
  • SS and SSGR is season series against the Kings (Kings’ points-earned vs. that team’s points-earned) and games remaining (team name in the SSGR column means that team has won the season series). 2 points for a Kings win, 1 for an OT or SO win, -1 for an OT or SO loss, -2 for a loss.
  • GD is goal-differential.
  • 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.

Observations:

  • Woo. Kings clinch at least 8th.
  • Dallas can still sneak into 8th, provided they win out and either
  • (a) Anaheim only manages one more point, or
  • (b) Chicago only manages two more points, or
  • (c) either Nashville or Phoenix lose their last two games.
  • If Dallas goes 2-1 and ends up at 95, they can only get in if Chicago loses out.
  • If Chicago ends up in any ties, here's their tie-breaker outlook: they will lose to Anaheim on wins; they will tie Dallas in wins but lose head-to-head.
  • The main thing for Chicago is, they can't end up tied with Dallas, since in order for that to happen, Dallas would (likely -- see next bullet) pick up enough wins along the way to tie Chicago in wins; and Dallas won the season series.
  • The exception is, if Dallas wins any of its remaining games in shoot-outs, then Chicago's prospects get much better. Chicago is currently two wins ahead of Dallas and need to stay ahead.
  • Anaheim, meanwhile, will win any tie-breaker because of its insurmountable wins lead, so they can afford to let Dallas tie them.
  • Nashville and Phoenix are currently tied at 97 points, and also tied with 37 wins, and also tied in the season series. Nashville prevails on goal-differential.
  • Calgary is mathematically eliminated. The best they can do is tie CHI and ANA, and they lose the wins tie-breaker to both.

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