The 5 -0 thrashing of Calgary tonight not only gets the Flames muttering to themselves -- it helps us along the merry path to the playoffs. Here is the updated spreadsheet, reflecting each team's progress through Thursday night's games.
As is evident, Nashville and St. Louis helped themselves with nice wins tonight. They are far from shoo-ins, but are making legitimate runs, along with Anaheim. Dallas is done, stick a fork in them after their OT loss to the Kings tonight. Edmonton is reeling after their 3rd straight loss, but does have an extended home stand to look foward to. In contrast, St. Louis has only 2 home games left -- both against the Jackets. They are playing great hockey, but closing with 6 of 8 on the road is brutal in such a close race.
Here are the new Magic Numbers for each team. Again, as a reminder, this number represents the number of Bluejackets wins and/or pursuing team losses that will ensure that team cannot pass the CBJ in the standings. An OTL by either the CBJ or the pursuing team reduces the Magic Number by 0.5.
Los Angeles 2
Dallas 3.5
Minnesota 5
St. Louis 5.5
Nashville 6
Anaheim 6
Edmonton 5.5
Once 5 of these teams have a Magic Number of 0, the CBJ have clinched! Saturday night presents a big opportunity against the Blues. Look for my Tweets and miscellaneous ramblings over the next few days.
Friday, March 27, 2009
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5 comments:
Great break down, but quick question, did you factor in win total for the magic number? Because there are a few teams behind the Jackets that even if they managed to tie at the end of the regular season would still be out due to less overall wins in the tie breaker, example is Oilers and the Blues. Tie breaker states that if teams are tied, first tie breaker is overall wins, so Jackets would have 39 to St. Louis/Edmonton would have 38. This adds an extra game in favor of the Jackets. Just a point, not relevant if they just keep winning!!!
No, I am not factoring number required to tie, just number required to absolutely preclude a team to overtake us. So, if the Kings have a maximum possible point total of 88, as they do, we need 4 points or 2 wins to reach 89 and completely knock them out.
As I haven't looked at it, I haven't studied what this would do to the number. Reduce it by .5, I suspect.
Good point.
--JAL
It would, just a thought as we close in on that magic number when teams are close to elimination, it does make a .5 game difference. This means when they are down to 1 game it maybe too late. Just something to keep in the back of the mind as this season winds down. Looking forward to game tonight and being at the game tomorrow. Lets win this back-to-back and really put a stranglehold on this playoff spot.
Hey, this is a fantastic piece of math. I know it's easy for me to ask, perhaps less easy for you to carry out -- but I'd love to see a daily update. Frankly, the Dispatch ought to even pick up on this the way they do for baseball teams as playoffs near.
Jeff -- I have included the Magic Numbers on the Playoff Tracker Spreadsheet you can link to on the right. These are updated as close to real time as I can get, depending on how late the west coast games go. ;-)
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