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Kings’ Day Off: The Good, The Bad, The Real Standings

Posted on by Daws Butler

Last night’s results

The Good: LAK WON, ANA LOST. NAS half-lost.

The Bad: (DET, SJS won, if you happen to be eyeing the 2nd or 3rd seed…)

Tonight’s Games

DAL @ ANA — As close to a playoff game as we’ve seen (so far) this season. Dallas loses and the Kings clinch; plus, the Stars lose and they can only reach 95 points if they win out the rest of the way. Anaheim loses and, well, it’s not out of the question that they could lose out (remaining games: SJS, LAK, LAK) and miss the playoffs. I don’t know what to want. But I have to be conservative and root for the Ducks to w– no, I can’t do it. Go Stars.

TBL @ CHI — I want the Hawks to make it so they can play either the Canucks or the Sharks in the first round, but I’m not taking any chances. Go Bolts.

Now, the updated standings:

Q NHL PTS W% PRJ MAX LSF PB +/- TO 97 GR W! SS SSGR GD Qcl
1 1 VAN 113 0.7152 117.3 119 103 45 18 n/a 3 48 -1 VAN 73 110
2 2 SJS 101 0.6474 106.2 109 113 55 8 n/a 4 41 0 1 33 100
3 3 DET 100 0.6410 105.1 108 102 56 7 n/a 4 41 3 LAK 22 100
4 4 LAK 96 0.6154 100.9 104 101 60 3 0-3-1 4 36 n/a n/a 28 95
5 5 PHX 96 0.6076 99.6 102 107 62 1 0-2-1 3 37 -2 1 8 95
6 6 NAS 95 0.6013 98.6 101 100 63 0 1-2-0 3 36 4 LAK 21 95
7 8 CHI 92 0.5974 98.0 102 112 62 1 2-2-1 5 36 -8 CHI 33 95
8 7 ANA 93 0.5962 97.8 101 89 63 0 2-2-0 4 40 1 2 -2 95
9 10 DAL 87 0.5649 92.6 97 88 67 -4 5-0-0 5 33 5 LAK -11 90
10 9 CGY 89 0.5633 92.4 95 90 69 -6 n/a 3 30 2 LAK 7 90
11 11 MIN 82 0.5256 86.2 90 84 74 -11 n/a 4 34 1 LAK -24 80
12 12 CBJ 81 0.5192 85.2 89 79 75 -12 n/a 4 29 3 LAK -30 80
13 13 STL 80 0.5128 84.1 88 90 76 -13 n/a 4 31 -8 STL -1 80
14 14 COL 66 0.4286 70.3 76 95 88 -25 n/a 5 23 8 LAK -57 65
15 15 EDM 59 0.3782 62.0 67 62 97 -34 n/a 4 22 7 LAK -70 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. TO 97 is the record needed to get to the presumed (by me) playoff-threshold. GR is games-remaining. GRb is games-remaining against the six “blue” teams. W! is wins plus OT wins (the first tie-breaker). SS and SSGR are 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:

  • The Kings are now tied with Nashville and Chicago in tie-breaker wins. One W! behind Phoenix.
  • It’s good enough to be tied with Nashville in W!, because the Kings won the season series, but they have to have more W! than Chicago, since Chicago won the SS against  the Kings.
  • It looks pretty likely that 95 points will in fact be good enough to make the playoffs. Unless Dallas is going to go 5-0 to close out the season.
  • In the cluster right below the Kings, PHX and NAS have more points, but only three games left. CHI and ANA have fewer points, but ANA has 4 games left, CHI has five.
  • In reality, those four teams are separated by a single point-blown. (see how useful PBs are, even this late in the season?)/

Talking Points