Playoff Watch 2021

[Stupendous Yappi]

			RW/ROW	Max PTS
1	Vegas	+10	12/16​	99​
2	Minnesota	+7	11/15​	95​
3	Colorado	+6	11/14​	94​
4	St Louis	+6	10/13​	92​
5	LAK	+3	9/10​	90​
6	Arizona	+2	10/10​	88​
7	San Jose	-2	4/5​	87​
8	Anaheim	-5	5/7​	80​

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

only because I was bored....

This looks great, and I think I can copy and edit your formatting. Maybe we should have a field for current total points.

 

[Thallis]

4th at this point in the season is concerning. We have by far the toughest schedule remaining and injuries + the series against the Coyotes have really hurt us when we needed to be collecting a cushion and seperating ourselves from the non-playoff teams. Just making the playoffs right now is a coin flip, and all the odds calculator sites are saying we're under LA in terms of odds to make it. We'll need to really perform well against at least one of the big teams in the division to do it.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

4th at this point in the season is concerning. We have by far the toughest schedule remaining and injuries + the series against the Coyotes have really hurt us when we needed to be collecting a cushion and seperating ourselves from the non-playoff teams. Just making the playoffs right now is a coin flip, and all the odds calculator sites are saying we're under LA in terms of odds to make it. We'll need to really perform well against at least one of the big teams in the division to do it.

May come down to the 8 games vs Minnesota. The Blues can ensure they get ahead of the Wild, or get buried by them. I don’t think the Kings can keep pace. They are playing a low event trap style all the time, and I think they’ll fade a bit as other teams transition to playoff style hockey.

 

[LGB]

4th at this point in the season is concerning. We have by far the toughest schedule remaining and injuries + the series against the Coyotes have really hurt us when we needed to be collecting a cushion and seperating ourselves from the non-playoff teams. Just making the playoffs right now is a coin flip, and all the odds calculator sites are saying we're under LA in terms of odds to make it. We'll need to really perform well against at least one of the big teams in the division to do it.

Those models generally just use team-level stats and can't account for injuries. We're definitely not a lock at this point though.

 

[BlueDream]

Maybe I’m overconfident but I don’t get the concern. Anaheim and San Jose are legitimately bad.

LA and Arizona, when you include OT losses, are struggling to stay above .500. We are missing a third of our lineup and still in a playoff spot.

 

[Bernie Federko]

Maybe I’m overconfident but I don’t get the concern. Anaheim and San Jose are legitimately bad.

LA and Arizona, when you include OT losses, are struggling to stay above .500. We are missing a third of our lineup and still in a playoff spot.

All of that is true but the remaining schedule is full of Vegas, Colorado, and Minny. If they can hold there own, they are a legitimate threat, if not and they fall out, probably wasn't meant to be.

 

[Thallis]

Maybe I’m overconfident but I don’t get the concern. Anaheim and San Jose are legitimately bad.

LA and Arizona, when you include OT losses, are struggling to stay above .500. We are missing a third of our lineup and still in a playoff spot.

The concern is that we have 7 games left of our 30 against those bad teams, 9 if you include LA in that. The fact that LA is within striking distance with 6 games vs San Jose, 4 vs arizona, and 4 vs Anaheim is worrying while most of our games are Minnesota, Colorado, and Vegas. LA gets a lot of games they figure to win while we will have to battle every night vs teams that are tough matchups even when we're totally healthy.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

As of 3/12

			RW/ROW	Max PTS
1	Vegas	+11	12/17​	99​
2	Minnesota	+8	12/16​	95​
3	Colorado	+7	12/15​	94​
4	St Louis	+6	10/13​	91​
5	LAK	+2	9/10​	88​
6	Arizona	+1	10/10​	84​
7	San Jose	-1	5/6​	87​
8	Anaheim	-6	5/7​	78​

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[Ranksu]

8 games against Wild will determine where this team is.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I feel like that table is missing a key piece of information. Suggestion: add in games remaining (GR). I'm OK with not having GP since we have PT+ [which I'd add as a label] but with "Max PTS" it's really difficult to understand what that means if we don't know how many points we have ourselves.

Good news from last night: we got a point, both Los Angeles and Arizona lost and got no points. We move to 29 points estimated needed for a playoff spot.

Bad news: we're kind of clearly 4th in the division, so if you think Vegas is overrated we might be in "put up or shut up" position in 2 months.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

I feel like that table is missing a key piece of information. Suggestion: add in games remaining (GR). I'm OK with not having GP since we have PT+ [which I'd add as a label] but with "Max PTS" it's really difficult to understand what that means if we don't know how many points we have ourselves.

Good news from last night: we got a point, both Los Angeles and Arizona lost and got no points. We move to 29 points estimated needed for a playoff spot.

Bad news: we're kind of clearly 4th in the division, so if you think Vegas is overrated we might be in "put up or shut up" position in 2 months.

If someone can format me a table with an additional column, I’ll add games remaining.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Pos	Team	PT+	GR	RW	ROW	Max PTS
1​	Vegas​	+12​	31​	13​	17​	99​
2​	Minnesota​	+9​	30​	13​	17​	95​
3​	Colorado​	+8​	30​	13​	17​	94​
4​	St. Louis​	+5​	28​	10​	13​	89​
5​	Los Angeles​	+1​	29​	9​	10​	86​
6​	Arizona​	E​	28​	10​	10​	82​
7​	San Jose​	E​	31​	6​	7​	87​
8​	Anaheim​	-7​	27​	5​	7​	76​

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

EDIT: updated through the Sunday games.

Summary: We're pretty clearly out of the top-3. I won't say Los Angeles or San Jose are hot on our heels, but we could easily open the door for one of them to crawl back into contention.

We're using up our margin of error. We gotta start making progress shortly or more and more games are going to have that must win feel, and I don't think that's a position we want to be in.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

We are at the point where I’m rooting for wins from Minnesota, Colorado and Vegas when they play the Kings and Coyotes. I’m not worried about trying to catch any of those teams, just make the field.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

IMO it really comes down to the next 8 games, and the next 2 are utterly critical if we're going to create separation for ourselves. We don't take a majority of the points there, we should feel nervous. After the next 8, our final 20 games have 3 that aren't Vegas, Colorado or Minnesota. Los Angeles has 13 of their last 20 against Arizona / San Jose / Anaheim.

We have to take care of business while we have the chance and bank points against teams we should beat. We don't do that, we're asking this roster to flip the switch and do it against the division's top-3 and I see few encouraging signs that they're going to be able to do that consistently enough to not sweat it out to the final games of the season.

 

[Ranksu]

We have 4 games next week.

 

[mike1320]

We have 4 games next week.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

As of 3/16

Pos	Team	PT+	GR	RW	ROW	Max PTS
1​	Vegas​	+13​	30​	14​	19​	99​
2​	Minnesota​	+10​	29​	14​	18​	95​
3​	Colorado​	+9​	29​	14​	17​	94​
4​	St. Louis​	+5​	28​	10​	13​	89​
5​	Los Angeles​	+1​	29​	9​	10​	86​
7​	Arizona​	-1​	27​	10​	10​	82​
6​	San Jose​	-1​	30​	6​	7​	85​
8​	Anaheim​	-8​	26​	5​	7​	74​

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Too lazy to swap Arizona and San Jose. The Blues getting a regulation win vs LA would help a lot. Losing in regulation would be “bad”.

 

[TheDizee]

we lucked out playing in this shit division

 

[BlueOil]

we lucked out playing in this shit division

oh come on we play to our opponent

 

[Brian39]

we lucked out playing in this shit division

I'm not sure that the Kings/Coyotes/Sharks/Ducks are much (or any) worse than the Hawks/Preds/Jackets/Wings. Swap us with Dallas (which would be the sensible way to put us in the Central) and I think we are in the same boat.

The Hawks are 2-7-3 vs TB/FLA/CAR. Against those same top 3 teams, the Jackets are 3-3-3, the Preds are 2-11-1 and the Wings are 5-8-2. Detroit and Chicago were awful last year too with Detroit being comically worse than anyone in our division. The Jackets and Preds have looked bad this year and I think the general consensus is that Columbus was a mediocre team propped up by unsustainable goaltending last year. That division also has a pretty terrible bottom 4 teams, so I think we would be in the same boat we are currently in if we were in the Central.

Plop us in the Canadian division and I don't think we would be in trouble. We would probably be sitting in 4th or 5th and certainly wouldn't be more than a handful of points out of a playoff spot. We struggle against trap teams that rely on defensive structure and low event hockey. There is one team capable of that in the North. I think the makeup of our blueline and offensive structure would be a perfect fit for that division and I think we would actually have noticeably more points than we do right now if all the teams we played were inept at defending and wanted to trade chances. I think Vegas/Minny/Colorado are a better top 3 than Toronto/Winnipeg/Edmonton.

A 1-2 month injury-fest in an 82 game season isn't nearly as big of a deal as it is in a 56 game season and I haven't seen anything around this league to suggest that we wouldn't have been in the Wild Card mix out of the 15 team Western Conference if this was a normal season. The 4 bad teams in our division would all still be in the West, as would Chicago, Nashville, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg. Instead of competing with the Kings for one playoff spot, we would be competing with the Kings, Jets, Canucks, Flames, Stars, and Hawks for 4 playoff spots (assuming the opinion is that Colorado, Minny, Vegas and Edmonton are out of reach).

We would be in trouble if we were in the East, because that division is stacked.

I don't think things are nearly as bleak as many do. I think we would still be inside the playoff bubble in pretty much any potential division besides the East and if we weren't we would be just outside it.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

oh come on we play to our opponent

You mean Arizona?

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

I won’t be surprised if Minnesota wins the division. I guess the 8 head to head games may have something to do with that outcome. I’m not sure I see much reason to prefer any of Colorado, Vegas or Minnesota as a playoff opponent, other than it would maybe be more satisfying to beat Vegas and would be a great storyline. I expect the Blues to go into the postseason as a team no one expects anything from

 

[Celtic Note]

I'm not sure that the Kings/Coyotes/Sharks/Ducks are much (or any) worse than the Hawks/Preds/Jackets/Wings. Swap us with Dallas (which would be the sensible way to put us in the Central) and I think we are in the same boat.

The Hawks are 2-7-3 vs TB/FLA/CAR. Against those same top 3 teams, the Jackets are 3-3-3, the Preds are 2-11-1 and the Wings are 5-8-2. Detroit and Chicago were awful last year too with Detroit being comically worse than anyone in our division. The Jackets and Preds have looked bad this year and I think the general consensus is that Columbus was a mediocre team propped up by unsustainable goaltending last year. That division also has a pretty terrible bottom 4 teams, so I think we would be in the same boat we are currently in if we were in the Central.

Plop us in the Canadian division and I don't think we would be in trouble. We would probably be sitting in 4th or 5th and certainly wouldn't be more than a handful of points out of a playoff spot. We struggle against trap teams that rely on defensive structure and low event hockey. There is one team capable of that in the North. I think the makeup of our blueline and offensive structure would be a perfect fit for that division and I think we would actually have noticeably more points than we do right now if all the teams we played were inept at defending and wanted to trade chances. I think Vegas/Minny/Colorado are a better top 3 than Toronto/Winnipeg/Edmonton.

A 1-2 month injury-fest in an 82 game season isn't nearly as big of a deal as it is in a 56 game season and I haven't seen anything around this league to suggest that we wouldn't have been in the Wild Card mix out of the 15 team Western Conference if this was a normal season. The 4 bad teams in our division would all still be in the West, as would Chicago, Nashville, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg. Instead of competing with the Kings for one playoff spot, we would be competing with the Kings, Jets, Canucks, Flames, Stars, and Hawks for 4 playoff spots (assuming the opinion is that Colorado, Minny, Vegas and Edmonton are out of reach).

We would be in trouble if we were in the East, because that division is stacked.

I don't think things are nearly as bleak as many do. I think we would still be inside the playoff bubble in pretty much any potential division besides the East and if we weren't we would be just outside it.

The East is clearly the toughest division. Then you can make an argument the West is next with the Central a negligible smidge behind or the same statement in reverse. The North is clearly the worst.

I am not sure how the easy comment developed, but it’s not terribly logical IMO.

 

[Brian39]

The East is clearly the toughest division. Then you can make an argument the West is next with the Central a negligible smidge behind or the same statement in reverse. The North is clearly the worst.

I am not sure how the easy comment developed, but it’s not terribly logical IMO.

If you just go by last season's standings then the West looks the worst because all 3 CA teams were bottom 5 in the league while all of Canada besides the Sens were at least okay. The Ducks haven't improved at all in my opinion, but LA and SJ both look better than their absolute disasters last season. I don't think either team is very good, but I thought both had better rosters than their record indicated last year.

 

[simon IC]

I think LA in particular is underrated. They might not have the big guns, but they have some good young players and play a sound defensive trap system. Combine this with Quick still having some gas in the tank, and you have a team that is not easy to play against.