Over the weekend, I listed the following important games leading up to the Kings playing the Penguins Thursday night. I added the results of the first four games, in bold.
- STL @ TBL (Sunday) [BLUES LOST IN OT; EH, I’LL TAKE IT]
- EDM @ NSH (Monday) [NASHVILLE LOST]
- CHI @ CGY [HAWKS LOST – NO BETTMAN POINT]
- COL @ PHX [AVS LOST – NO BETTMAN POINT]
- SJS @ WAS (Tuesday)
- STL @ FLA
- CBJ @ PIT
- SJS @ CBJ (Wednesday)
- NSH @ DET
- COL @ MIN
- PHX @ DAL
- OTT @ CGY
- CHI @ EDM
- ANA @ VAN
So far so great. The standings now look like this:
| Q | OFF. | PTS | W% | PRJ | PB | to94 | GR | R/OTW | R/OT/SO | |
| 1 | 1 | VAN | 79 | 0.7315 | 120.0 | 29 | 6-19-3 | 28 | 33 | 31-10/2-4/2-5 |
| 2 | 2 | DET | 70 | 0.6604 | 108.3 | 36 | 11-16-2 | 29 | 30 | 23-15/7-4/2-2 |
| 3 | 3 | DAL | 65 | 0.6132 | 100.6 | 41 | 13-13-3 | 29 | 26 | 22-18/4-1/4-4 |
| 4 | 6 | SJS | 62 | 0.5849 | 95.9 | 44 | 15-12-2 | 29 | 25 | 23-19/2-4/3-2 |
| 5 | 4 | NAS | 63 | 0.5833 | 95.7 | 45 | 14-11-3 | 28 | 22 | 22-19/0-4/6-3 |
| 6 | 7 | ANA | 62 | 0.5741 | 94.1 | 46 | 15-11-2 | 28 | 25 | 23-21/2-2/4-2 |
| 7 | 5 | PHX | 63 | 0.5727 | 93.9 | 47 | 14-10-3 | 27 | 25 | 25-19/0-6/2-3 |
| 8 | 10 | MIN | 59 | 0.5673 | 93.0 | 45 | 16-11-3 | 30 | 26 | 22-20/4-1/1-4 |
| 9 | 9 | LAK | 60 | 0.5660 | 92.8 | 46 | 16-11-2 | 29 | 23 | 22-22/1-1/6-1 |
| 10 | 8 | CGY | 61 | 0.5545 | 90.9 | 49 | 15-9-3 | 27 | 21 | 19-21/2-2/6-5 |
| 11 | 11 | CHI | 58 | 0.5472 | 89.7 | 48 | 17-10-2 | 29 | 24 | 22-22/2-2/3-2 |
| 12 | 14 | STL | 54 | 0.5294 | 86.8 | 48 | 19-10-2 | 31 | 20 | 18-20/2-4/3-4 |
| 13 | 13 | CBJ | 55 | 0.5288 | 86.7 | 49 | 18-9-3 | 30 | 21 | 17-22/4-3/4-2 |
| 14 | 12 | COL | 56 | 0.5283 | 86.6 | 50 | 18-9-2 | 29 | 22 | 17-22/5-6/3-0 |
| 15 | 15 | EDM | 40 | 0.3774 | 61.9 | 66 | 26-1-2 | 29 | 15 | 13-29/2-1/1-7 |
Some observations:
- PHX and CGY’s wins put one of them ahead of the Kings in the official standings and the other ahead of the Kings in my standings. That’s okay. Because COL’s loss pushes them to the brink of elimination by my (possibly incorrect) way of thinking. If COL can put together an 18-9-2 run to close out the season, they deserve to be in.
- Chicago is starting to be in a very bad place. They can certainly still make it. But their road to the playoffs is even bumpier than the Kings’ (everyone’s road is bumpy at this point, but consider this: Chicago’s last two games of the year are against the Red Wings. They had better not need those points by the time they get there).
- Calgary is still in the thick of it, but they are a sub-.500 team in regulation. They’ve really been helped by those seven Bettman points.
- That reminds me to mention a couple of changes I made to the chart. I added a column: “R/OT/SO.” That stands for regulation/over-time/shoot-out. The column shows the record of the team, wins and losses, in regulation, OT and SO. Hypens separate wins and losses.
- I changed the heading of the W column to reflect the fact that it is actually wins plus OT wins but not shoot-out wins. “R/OTW” stands for regulation/OT wins.
- I like the new R/OT/SO column because you can see, for example, that Vancouver is twenty-one games above .500 in regulation.
- The Hawks and Kings, meanwhile, are .500 in regulation.
- The other change I made: things are so tight that I had to add a decimal place to W% and PRJ. Rounding to the thousandths place was causing teams to look tied (e.g. .567, .567), when in fact one was .5674 and the other was .5667. Same with the projected point totals. There’s a big difference between projecting to 93 points and 92.5 points. I could be the difference between making the playoffs and not.
- Sharks play the Caps tomorrow. Excellent time for a loss. That would drop San Jose below the Kings in W% and tied in points-blown. Go Caps!