Firstly, apologies on a lack of postings. This semester has been a holy nightmare at work for some reason, and I've been so slammed/tired/wanting to lock myself into a dark room to cry that I haven't had a chance to write much on any blog aside from my game day stuff at SBNSTL. But it's final exam day #1, and I finally have a chance to breathe - and write.
Secondly, apologies on the lack of being able to use a calendar.
Power rankings are a funny thing. People love them, or think that they're written by a bunch of useless hacks who hate their team and don't understand hockey. The former group is comprised of fans of teams who are either in the top-ten or who have jumped a billion spaces up, and the latter are usually fans of a terrible Canadian team who screams about bias or something ("This list should be written in French! Why are ze Habs so low! I blame Cunneyworth - someone alert ze authorities!").
If you don't love or hate them, you're in the majority who view them as opinion pieces from individual websites/pundits. Are they a reliable gauge of how teams are doing in actuality? Not necessarily. But, in any case, good press trumps bad press - or no press at all. Here're how the Blues rank in the bigger ones:
NHL.com - 5th
TSN - 8th
CBC - 10th
ESPN - 6th
THN - 10th
FoxSports - 7th
CBS Sports - 6th
USA Today - 9th
Basically, you can see the trend for where the pundits believe the Blues are as far as in comparison to the other teams in the league. for once, there seems to be a consistency in agreement, though the positions range from 5th to 10th place. My question to you this week is do you view these rankings as indicative of a respect level? There're always teams who will be playing good hockey who have a "reputation" for being an average team at best, so they get shoved into the bottom 10 or so - Winnipeg comes to mind. They seem to be playing very well, and at the same time, they're consistently in the bottom ten. Are they one of the best or strongest teams? No, but if you're taking power rankings as a judgement call of how teams are doing at a given moment in the season, shouldn't a team who is 6-3-1 in their last ten be ranked higher than teams with worse records?
Are power rankings a valuable tool in judging the respect given to a team? Are they biased? Or, in some cases, do the columnists who author these lists actually try to look at the stats and the teams' play to put them in an order that resembles something rational?