Comparing Schedules for the Playoff Stretch Run

The other night, I got curious as to how our remaining schedule compared to the other teams that are competing for playoff spots. I created a little spreadsheet, and took a look. This is what I came up with.

First, I took the current 7th through 14th seeds. Although the real competition is between 8th and 13th, I wanted to expand a little to gather more data. The current standings look like this:

• 7th NAS 75 pts
• 8th DET 72 pts
• 9th CGY 71 pts
• 10th STL 69 pts
• 11th DAL 68 pts
• 12th MIN 67 pts
• 13th ANA 67 pts

• 14th CBJ 61 pts

These are the "contenders". These are the schedules that I've compared, and discovered the following:

MIN has 19 games remaining on their schedule. STL and CBJ have 17 games left. Everyone else has 18.

DET controls their own fate the most; of the 18 games left on their schedule, 10 are against fellow contenders. The team that needs the most help from other teams is DAL, they only play other contenders 5 times.

Things are pretty even on Home/Away games. CGY has the most, playing 11 of 18 on the road. ANA only plays 7 on the road.

I also looked at who is playing the current division leaders for a measure of who had the toughest schedule ahead. In the cases where  there is a tie, I counted both teams. Right now, that would be PIT, BUF, OTT, WAS, CHI, VAN, COL, and SJ. The team with the toughest schedule is probably CGY. Of the 18 games left, 9 are against division leaders. DAL is right behind with 8. At the opposite end of the spectrum is NAS. Already ahead of the pack, they also only play division leaders twice for the remainder of the schedule.

This is how STL fared:

17 Games Remaining

9 Games Against Contenders

10 Games on the Road

3 Games against Division Leaders (once more against COL, and CHI twice)

I'm not sure what you can project out of all of this. However, when some teams make the cut, and the others don't, I'll bet that these are some of the reasons why that did or didn't happen.

-CrossCheckRaise