Saturday’s (and a couple of Friday’s) results:
The Good: Kings win, Preds lose, Wings lose, Yotes lose, Hawks half-lose (Friday), Flames half-lose, Blues lose.
The Bad: Yotes win (Friday), Nucks win, Stars win, Hawks win (Saturday), Sharks win, Wild win, Avs win.
So?
Possibly the best news here is that Nashville is now 3.5 games behind the Kings, and are inching closer to the DET-CGY-DAL-MIN-ANA-STL death-match. LAK, VAN, PHX and COL are still separated by 3 points. In my non-binding standings, the Kings jump up into 3rd (official standings have Vancouver in the 3rd seed, but I frankly have no respect for this divisional seed B.S. and choose to ignore it. I want to see how teams in the conference compare, not who benefits from being in a weak division.) Also, I note that the Kings are closer to the 1st seed than the 9th seed.
Sports Club Stats has the Kings’ playoff chances at 99.5%, with a likely 4th seed (59%), and likely final point total in the 95-112 point range. In their simulations, the point total seen with the greatest frequency is 104. That’s about as meaningless as the 112 point ceiling is goofy (I mean, can you imagine?); the thing to focus on is the 95 point floor. At 95 points (which would require them going 9-13-2 the rest of the way), they only miss the playoffs 1% of the time.
Here are the standings:
- San Jose Sharks 31 (1) +10
- Chicago Blackhawks 35 (2) +6
- Los Angeles Kings 41 (4) —
- Vancouver Canucks 42 (3) -1
- Phoenix Coyotes 43 (5) -2
- Colorado Avalanche 44 (6) -3
- Nashville Predators 48 (8) -7
- Calgary Flames 51 (7) -10
- Detroit Red Wings 52 (9) -11
- Dallas Stars 53 (10) -12
- Minnesota Wild 54 (11) -13
- Anaheim Ducks 55 (12) -14
- St. Louis Blues 57 (13) -16
- Columbus Blue Jackets 63 (14) -22
- Edmonton Oilers 72 (15) -31
These are standings in points-blown.
Two points “awarded” for every loss, one point for every OTL/SOL. 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.
Tie breaker is games-played, except that the winner of the tie breaker is the team who has played more games. If this seems counter-intuitive, consider this: A team with a 10-2 record is better than a team with a 2-2 record, who is, in turn better than a team that’s 0-2.