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Saturday: The Points You Blew and the Record You Need

Posted on by Daws Butler

The Good: Kings win, Nucks half-lose, Hawks half-lose,

The Bad: Preds win, Yotes win, Wings win, Stars win, Blues win.

So?

Strangely, given the level of anxiety in the Kings hive mind, the Kings find themselves equidistant from 9th place and 1st over-all in the West. Five points separate 3 from 6. Four points separate 7 from 9. 10-13 are still hanging on by the slimmest of threads. 14 and 15 are still having their Taylor Hall tea party (don’t ask, I don’t even know what that means). So not much has changed really. Except that Calgary, which had threatened to disappear, now has rejoined the 7-9 party (though they still have the worst lot of the three teams), and Minnesota, which had threatened to over-take Calgary (at least in my imagination), has dropped back into the Hail Mary group.A record of 4-8-0 will be enough to get the Kings in. I wouldn’t mind getting those 8 points sooner rather than later.

Here are the standings* (if you haven’t seen my version of standings before, scroll to the bottom for the explanation):

  1. Chicago Blackhawks 45 (1) +8
  2. San Jose Sharks 46 (2) +7
  3. Vancouver Canucks 52 (3) +1
  4. Phoenix Coyotes 49 (4) +4
  5. Los Angeles Kings 53 (5) —
  6. Colorado Avalanche 54 (7) -1
  7. Nashville Predators 57 (6) -4
  8. Detroit Red Wings 59 (8) -6
  9. Calgary Flames 61 (9) -8
  10. St. Louis Blues 65 (10) -12
  11. Dallas Stars 65 (11) -12
  12. Anaheim Ducks 66 (12) -13
  13. Minnesota Wild 68 (13) -15
  14. Columbus Blue Jackets
  15. 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:

  1. San Jose Sharks**
  2. Chicago Blackhawks**
  3. Phoenix Coyotes**
  4. Vancouver Canucks 1-8-1
  5. Nashville Predators 3-6-0
  6. Los Angeles Kings 4-8-0
  7. Colorado Avalanche 4-7-1
  8. Detroit Red Wings 6-5-0
  9. Calgary Flames 7-4-0
  10. St. Louis Blues 9-2-0
  11. Dallas Stars 10-2-0
  12. Anaheim Ducks 10-1-1
  13. Minnesota Wild 10-0-1
  14. Columbus Blue Jackets
  15. 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.

Talking Points