NHL playoff chase difficult for Calgary & Dallas, easier for Ottawa & Montreal

by Dirk Hoag on Mar 1, 2010 3:36 PM EST Comment 2 comments

As NHL play resumes tonight after the lengthy Olympic break, all eyes are focused on the road to the playoffs, since so many teams are bunched tightly together in both the Eastern and Western conferences.

But which teams have a more difficult road than others? Below, I leveraged the NHL Super Schedule to figure that out...

The table below includes many of the main factors which describe the difficulty of a team's schedule. A good part of the variance that you'll see in the Average Opponent Winning % is the fact that the Western Conference is much stronger than the East, but if you make some side-by-side comparisons of teams battling for playoff position, the differences jump out:

Team	Games	Home	Road	Avg Opp Win %	Avg Opp 5 on 5 GF/GA	Back-To-Back Sets	Total Mileage
Anaheim Ducks	20	12	8	.516	1.03	4	10,592
Atlanta Thrashers	22	14	8	.488	1.02	5	7,216
Boston Bruins	22	9	13	.480	1.02	4	7,912
Buffalo Sabres	22	9	13	.474	0.97	6	6,049
Calgary Flames	20	9	11	.549	1.10	2	16,104
Carolina Hurricanes	21	10	11	.510	1.05	4	8,864
Chicago Blackhawks	21	10	11	.506	1.01	5	13,072
Colorado Avalanche	21	11	10	.529	1.07	5	11,028
Columbus Blue Jackets	19	10	9	.518	1.05	3	7,839
Dallas Stars	21	12	9	.557	1.09	2	9,712
Detroit Red Wings	21	12	9	.506	1.02	3	9,289
Edmonton Oilers	21	9	12	.517	1.01	4	14,420
Florida Panthers	21	11	10	.508	1.02	4	12,957
Los Angeles Kings	21	11	10	.512	1.01	3	15,530
Minnesota Wild	21	10	11	.490	1.02	4	10,566
Montreal Canadiens	19	9	10	.465	0.96	3	9,656
Nashville Predators	21	12	9	.499	1.00	4	11,590
New Jersey Devils	21	11	10	.467	0.97	5	10,143
New York Islanders	20	11	9	.514	1.02	4	9,453
New York Rangers	20	8	12	.489	1.00	4	6,381
Ottawa Senators	19	7	12	.449	0.99	2	13,689
Philadelphia Flyers	22	10	12	.469	0.97	5	8,025
Phoenix Coyotes	19	8	11	.520	1.06	4	11,888
Pittsburgh Penguins	20	10	10	.476	1.00	5	6,142
San Jose Sharks	20	10	10	.504	1.03	3	13,805
St. Louis Blues	20	8	12	.511	0.99	4	10,008
Tampa Bay Lightning	21	11	10	.496	1.05	4	8,900
Toronto Maple Leafs	21	12	9	.472	0.94	4	5,614
Vancouver Canucks	21	10	11	.529	1.04	5	13,664
Washington Capitals	20	12	8	.468	0.95	3	6,643

Take, for example, the teams in the #8-10 spots in the West (Calgary, Dallas and Detroit). Other than having to play one more back-to-back set, the Red Wings have a significantly easier remaining schedule.

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Comments

Dirk, this is great stuff.

Just out of curiosity, what site do you use to compile this data? I doubt you calculated all of this on your own – that would take more time than I can possible imagine.

And Rec’d of course.

DC Landing Strip - Waxed and Ready to Go

by Alex Reed on Mar 1, 2010 9:49 PM EST reply actions