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Rising and Falling in the Western Conference
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Cam Charron
Nov 30, 2011, 15:52 ESTUpdated: Nov 30, 2011, 15:47 EST
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The simplest way to win a hockey game is not to “forecheck harder” than the opposition. You don’t get two points for blocking more shots than the other team, and at the end of the day, no one cares if you played more physically or even directed more shots at the net. What matters is the scoreboard, and the simplest way to win a hockey game is to score more goals than the other team.
It’s such an easy concept, and yet, when analyzing the standings throughout the season and looking to see where there’s room for teams to move, the “put the puck in the net, prevent the same” formula is all too often thrown to the wayside.
Baseball writer-turned-executive Bill James, who I regard as the greatest sportswriter of all time, had a very interesting metric to help us determine how many wins a team should “expect” to have. It is called Pythagorean Expectation, and while i sounds like a lot of math, it really just involves plugging a couple of numbers into a spreadsheet and letting it do the work for you.
Pythagorean Expectation, according to Wikipedia, can be described as such:
\mathrm{Win} = \frac{\text{runs scored}^2}{\text{runs scored}^2 + \text{runs allowed}^2} = \frac{1}{1+(\text{runs allowed}/\text{runs scored})^2}.
In hockey, we can simply replace “runs” with “goals” and at the end of the season, a team’s goal differential syncs up very well with a team’s record, except in maybe three or four extreme cases. The theory behind this is that winning close games isn’t a true team talent as much as it is luck and random draw. If a team scores 270 goals and allows 200, regardless of the order, it will win 53 games.
Since winning close games is luck-based, we can use it to look at which teams may have enjoyed “good luck” in the first part of the season. What Pythagorean Expectation allows us to do this early in the season, is judge how many games a team should have won, not necessarily how much they have won. We should be able to see who is due for a climb.
First, the current Western Conference standings: 
TeamGPWPtsPts/82
Detroit
22
14
29
108
Minnesota
24
14
31
106
San Jose
21
13
27
105
Phoenix
23
13
29
103
St. Louis
24
14
30
103
Chicago
25
14
31
102
Vancouver
24
14
29
99
Dallas
24
14
29
99
Los Angeles
24
12
28
96
Edmonton
24
12
26
89
Nashville
24
11
26
89
Calgary
23
10
21
75
Colorado
24
10
21
72
Anaheim
23
6
16
57
Columbus
24
6
15
51
The cutoff between first and eighth, based on simple point percentage, is 99 points. The Western Conference has apparently played well enough against the East so far that a team will need almost 100 points to crack the playoffs. If that number seems a little high, it’s because it is, and it is bound to drop to a more reasonable 94 or 95 points.
If the playoffs started today, the Canucks would apparently be the 7th seed, playing in Minnesota. I’d almost take that.
Why? Because take a look at each team’s expected win total over 82 games:
TeamGFGAxWxPts
Detroit
65
49
52
115
San Jose
60
48
50
110
Vancouver
73
60
49
108
St. Louis
59
50
48
105
Phoenix
65
57
46
103
Edmonton
65
60
44
99
Minnesota
57
53
44
98
Los Angeles
57
55
42
95
Chicago
80
78
42
94
Dallas
62
65
39
88
Nashville
60
63
39
88
Calgary
51
60
34
79
Colorado
62
73
34
79
Columbus
55
79
27
64
Anaheim
50
76
25
60
(xW = expected wins | xPts = expected points)
Now, Vancouver appears to be on a 108-point pace, as they have outscored their opponents by 13. In essence, their early record is disproportionate to their play. Here, Minnesota, with a 4-goal differential, has simply 98 “expected” points. For expected points, I gave each team the benefit of ten overtime losses. There’s no real scientific basis for this, but it gives us a better ballpark figure for how good a team will have to be to make the playoffs.
Here, Minnesota is 7th, and the Canucks would play a series against Edmonton to start the playoffs.
According to early season goal differential, Columbus, Edmonton and Vancouver are much better than their records indicate, while Chicago, Minnesota and Dallas have earned the benefit of some close wins so far.

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