clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

NHL Power Rankings 3/20/13 - The Next Step?

Publications are asking if the Islanders' recent run might be the momentum they need for the playoffs.

By ICanSeeForIslesAndIsles
Your contact lens is over there.
Your contact lens is over there.
Bruce Bennett

It's always better doing these NHL power ranking roundups when the Islanders are on a good run of play (that is, until the referees rip a win away from them and hand it on a silver platter to the opponent). And it seems that the major publications are ready to jump on the bandwagon, should the Isles somehow ride this little wave they've got going.

Before the polls and rankings and alternate five-point standings, a few links:

And now, your punditry:

Weekly Round-Up of Opinion Polls*

Site Ranking Prior Comments
CBS 18 23 The Isles are just two points out of a playoff spot but it's hard to consider them a true threat when they're 29th in the league in goals against per game with 3.25.
THN --- 19 No rankings this week.
ESPN 19 24 OK, is this a real playoff push or just a spasm of inspired play designed to tease long-suffering Isles fans? The Isles have gone 5-1-1 to close to within two points of eighth place in the East.
TSN 21 22 5-1-2 in their last eight games, the Islanders are also 8-4-1 on the road this season, the best mark of any team outside the playoffs at the moment.
Fox Sports 21 24 The Isles have a two-game winning streak for the second time this month, are 5-1-2 over their last eight and have inched above .500. The last portion of this run has come minus winger Michael Grabner (shoulder).
NHL Numbers 19 19 No Comments on this page.
Average 19.6 21.8 Will you just pull a "Chicago 2011" already?!

* Well, actually, only the first six lines are apparently opinion polls. Our good friend Keith Quinn showed me a link to the seventh, from the NHL Numbers site. They recently started their own objective power rankings formula. They don't tell us exactly how they come up with it, and their site states that the intention of their calculations is to predict where each team will finish the season. But predicting where a team will end up is good enough for me. Ever since Sportsnet stopped doing their rankings, we were running a bit light, so I'm throwing NHL Numbers' rankings for the rest of the year. Click on their name to go to their site and see what they say about their little baby.

Certainly, despite the fact that the Isles beat teams they absolutely were supposed to beat (and while neither victory was impressive), their average placement has risen. The comments are generally cautiously optimistic, which is better than what we usually get, I suppose.

LHH Power Rankings

On to the weekly calculations done by our in-house staff of one. The final column shows the overall NHL rank, which doesn't mean a whole lot this year since the two conferences don't play each other.

Overall
EAST W L OTL Pts Win Pct PWR Rank
1 Pittsburgh 22 8 0 44 0.733 2074 3
2 Boston 19 5 3 41 0.759 2065 4
3 Montreal 19 5 4 42 0.750 2036 5
4 Ottawa 15 8 6 36 0.621 1776 9
5 Toronto 15 12 2 32 0.552 1588 15
6 Carolina 15 11 2 32 0.571 1559 16
7 New Jersey 13 10 6 32 0.552 1542 17
8 Winnipeg 15 12 2 32 0.552 1532 18
9 NY Islanders 13 12 3 29 0.518 1501 21
10 NY Rangers 14 12 2 30 0.536 1461 24
11 Buffalo 10 15 4 24 0.414 1236 26
12 Philadelphia 13 16 1 27 0.450 1234 27
13 Tampa Bay 13 15 1 27 0.466 1211 28
14 Washington 12 15 1 25 0.446 1137 29
15 Florida 7 16 6 20 0.345 963 30

Overall
WEST W L OTL Pts Win Pct PWR Rank
1 Chicago 24 2 3 51 0.879 2601 1
2 Anaheim 21 3 4 46 0.821 2477 2
3 St. Louis 16 10 2 34 0.607 1841 6
4 Los Angeles 16 10 2 34 0.607 1797 7
5 Vancouver 13 9 6 32 0.571 1795 8
6 Minnesota 16 10 2 34 0.607 1769 10
7 Detroit 14 10 5 33 0.569 1746 11
8 Dallas 13 12 3 29 0.518 1622 12
9 San Jose 12 10 6 30 0.536 1607 13
10 Phoenix 13 12 4 30 0.517 1595 14
11 Edmonton 11 11 6 28 0.500 1520 19
12 Nashville 11 12 6 28 0.483 1518 20
13 Columbus 11 12 6 28 0.483 1495 22
14 Calgary 11 12 4 26 0.481 1473 23
15 Colorado 10 14 4 24 0.429 1333 25

The Isles are right where they've been the past month or so. While beating the Panthers is better than losing to them, that win still doesn't move the Isles much. The Tampa game doesn't do much more.

OK, the editing window has already slowed to a crawl, and I haven't even handed this to Dom yet so he could insert a few links. Time to wrap things up with our little side project.

Alternate Reality Standings

The following rewards each type of win and loss differently, depending on how long it takes to win or lose. A regulation win is 5 points, OT win 4 points, and so on down to a regulation loss being zero. Yes, I know that the teams would behave differently if the points were handed out this way. This is just a little experiment. (Actual Place is the place the team is in the actual NHL standings, not counting the automatic top-three spot for first-place teams).

(Number of points) (5) (4) (3) (2) (1) (0) Actual
EAST RW OTW SOW SOL OTL RL Pts Place
1 Pittsburgh 19 1 2 0 0 8 105 1
2 Montreal 15 2 2 2 2 5 95 2
3 Boston 15 1 3 1 2 5 92 3
4 Ottawa 11 1 3 4 2 8 78 4
5 Carolina 14 1 0 1 1 11 77 T5
6 Toronto 13 2 0 2 0 12 77 T5
7 Winnipeg 11 3 1 2 0 12 74 T5
8 New Jersey 10 1 2 4 2 10 70 T5
9 Tampa Bay 12 1 0 1 0 15 66 T11
10 NY Rangers 9 2 3 2 0 12 66 9
11 Philadelphia 11 1 1 1 0 16 64 T11
12 NY Islanders 9 2 2 0 3 12 62 10
13 Washington 10 2 0 0 1 15 59 13
14 Buffalo 7 0 3 2 2 15 50 14
15 Florida 6 0 1 1 5 16 40 15

(Number of points) (5) (4) (3) (2) (1) (0) Actual
WEST RW OTW SOW SOL OTL RL Pts Place
1 Chicago 16 4 4 3 0 2 114 1
2 Anaheim 15 1 5 3 1 3 101 2
3 Los Angeles 15 0 1 1 1 10 81 T3
4 Minnesota 11 2 3 1 1 10 75 T3
5 St. Louis 10 4 2 1 1 10 75 T3
6 Detroit 11 1 2 2 3 10 72 6
7 Vancouver 9 1 3 5 1 9 69 7
8 Dallas 10 2 1 1 2 12 65 10
9 Phoenix 9 1 3 3 1 12 65 T8
10 Calgary 10 1 0 3 1 12 61 14
11 San Jose 8 0 4 3 3 10 61 T8
12 Nashville 6 3 2 5 1 12 59 T11
13 Edmonton 7 2 2 2 4 11 57 T11
14 Columbus 5 2 4 3 3 12 54 T11
15 Colorado 7 2 1 1 3 14 51 15

As stated last week, the alternate method hurts the Isles because a good number of their wins come after 60 minutes. But they'd still be only 8 points (a regulation win and a shootout win) from 8th.

OK enough for now. Time to go back to my new project: A spreadsheet that will accurately count the number of times the refs Avery our team over in a game.

Next Up In Bits o' Islanders News