Comments / New

The Real Standings

  • Sorted by winning percentage (WIN%).
  • Only regulation wins and OT wins are counted as wins (W).
  • Shoot-out wins are tallied separately. Why? Because they don’t count in the “total wins” tie-breaker, so we need to keep them out of the W column.
  • “PROJ” = projected final point total.
  • “GB” = games back, i.e. baseball standings.
  • “PB” = points blown. Points-blown refers to the number of potential points a team has failed to earn. The fewer the better, obviously. This may seem like a needlessly confusing and pointless stat to keep track of, in which case, feel free to skip this column entirely. However, I find it’s a useful way to correct for disparities in games-played. For example, notice that PHX has blown fewer points (i.e. screwed up less) than their win% or point total would indicate, whereas CHI has blown more points (i.e. screwed up more). Think of points-blown as a kind of “hidden reason for optimism (or pessimism)” quantifier. I’ll have to think of a better way to phrase that, but it’ll do for now.
  • (as an aside, check out Chicago. They are 2nd in the West in the official “ESPN” standings. But they’ve played several more games than many of the teams. Accordingly, when sorted by WIN%, they drop all the way to 12th, and if you look only at points-blown, they drop to 14th, one game above dead-last.)
  • “PS +/-” = points blown, relative to the 8th seed. In other words, how far above or below the post-season (“P.S.”) cut-off a team is.
  • Green indicates a projected finish 100 points or above (certain to qualify for playoffs). Yellow is 94-99 projected points (probable for playoffs), orange is 86-93 (projected to fall short), red is below 85 (doomed).
  • I’m kidding about doomed. These are obviously somewhat arbitrary cut-offs, other than the assumption that 94 points is a pretty safe bet (but not 100% safe) if you’re looking for the playoff threshold.

GP W L SOW SO/OTL PTS WIN% PROJ. GB PS +/- PB
1 STL 9 5 1 1 2 14 0.778 128 0 5 4
2 LAK 11 6 3 2 0 16 0.727 119 -1 3 6
3 DET 9 6 2 0 1 13 0.722 118 -0.5 4 5
4 NAS 10 5 2 0 3 13 0.650 107 -1.5 2 7
5 CBJ 11 6 4 1 0 14 0.636 104 -2 1 8
6 VAN 11 6 3 0 2 14 0.636 104 -2 1 8
7 DAL 10 4 4 2 0 12 0.600 98 -2 1 8
8 COL 11 5 4 1 1 13 0.591 97 -2.5 0 9
9 SJS 10 5 4 0 1 11 0.550 90 -2.5 0 9
10 CGY 11 5 5 1 0 12 0.545 89 -3 -1 10
11 MIN 11 5 4 0 2 12 0.545 89 -3 -1 10
12 CHI 14 6 6 1 1 15 0.536 88 -4.5 -4 13
13 PHX 10 3 4 0 3 9 0.450 74 -3.5 -2 11
14 EDM 10 3 5 0 2 8 0.400 66 -4 -3 12
15 ANA 12 4 7 0 1 9 0.375 62 -5.5 -6 15

Talking Points