The Good: Flames lose, Blues lose, Stars half-lose, Sharks lose, Avs lose.
The Bad: Preds win, Yotes win, Ducks win.
So?
- The Wild are hanging on by a thread. Their needed record is now 9-0-1. Next up: SJS, PHI, DET, LA, CHI.
- With the loss today, Calgary needs to go 7-3-0 the rest of the way. Next up: ANA, NYI, BOS, WAS and PHX.
- With tonight’s loss, COL is inching closer to the NAS/DET/CGY bottleneck. Upcoming: LAK, LAK, PHX, SJS. After those two games against the Kings, Colorado could drop down to 9th, or catapult itself back up to 5th. And the Kings could go a long way toward securing a playoff spot by pushing the Avs down.
- As much as it would be fun to mock San Jose’s fall to fourth place (which is where they are in the ESPN standings), the truth is they have two games in hand on Phoenix, which means in (my superior) reality, San Jose is still a point up on the Yotes. The Sharks might think about winning a game or two soon. They are the worst team in the West since the Olympic break, which is weird, given this:
Here are the standings* (if you haven’t seen my version of standings before, scroll to the bottom for the explanation):
- Chicago Blackhawks 45 (1) +8
- San Jose Sharks 48 (4) +5
- Vancouver Canucks 52 (3) +1
- Phoenix Coyotes 49 (2) +4
- Los Angeles Kings 53 (6) —
- Colorado Avalanche 56 (7) -3
- Nashville Predators 57 (5) -4
- Detroit Red Wings 59 (8) -6
- Calgary Flames 63 (9) -10
- Anaheim Ducks 66 (11) -13
- St. Louis Blues 67 (10) -14
- Minnesota Wild 68 (12) -15
- Dallas Stars 68 (13) -13
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Columbus Blue Jackets Edmonton Oilers
And here’s the record each team needs from here on, to get to the assumed (by me) magical point total of 95:
- Chicago Blackhawks**
- San Jose Sharks**
- Phoenix Coyotes**
- Vancouver Canucks 1-8-1
- Nashville Predators 2-6-0
- Los Angeles Kings 4-8-0
- Colorado Avalanche 4-6-1
- Detroit Red Wings 6-5-0
- Calgary Flames 7-3-0
- St. Louis Blues 9-1-0
- Anaheim Ducks 9-1-1
- Dallas Stars 9-0-1
- Minnesota Wild 9-0-1
- Columbus Blue Jackets
- Edmonton Oilers
*standings in points-blown explained: “points blown” means, literally, how many points your team could have had, but squandered; a loss is 2 blown points, a “half-loss” (OTL/SOL) is one blown point, a win is zero blown points. The resulting standings are golf-like, the fewer blown points the better. Two points “awarded” for every loss, one point for every OTL/SOL. Again, 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.
**already hit 95 points. They can lose the rest of their games now, and should, if they want to avoid Detroit in the first round.