Western Domination

There was a debate [best link I could find] around Christmas time about which conference was better. Everyone knows about western domination in the regular season (63W - 48L in regulation and basically tied in OT and 62W - 52L in 2005-2006), but it seems the East has been raising the cup a lot more than the west recently. Since 2000 the west has only won twice in six opportunities, that doesn't sound like a dominant conference to me.

However, if you take a closer look at the winners and losers (W = west games won, E = east games won, R = position in conference standings)

The total wins for the West in 9 years is 31 and the east is 22 (3:2) a little higher than the 6:5 record in the regular season.

When the west loses they average 5.75^th place in the conference standings
When the east loses they average 3.6^th place in their conference.

The west average 2.75 wins in a losing series, whereas the east averages 1.2 wins.

Despite the fact that the western average position is lower then the eastern average position they still have 31 wins in the Stanley Cup Finals to the 22 Eastern wins. The main point thee is that since 2003 the team who made it to the finals were all ranked less than 5^th and they all played well enough to get a few wins in the final, which is quite impressive. Any of these lower seeds could've won. A lower ranked team in general isn't as good as a higher ranked team. Due to randomness, injuries and other issues a lower ranked team can beat a better team, but that is not the norm.

I'm saying all this because, I believe the west is all but guaranteed a victory in the Stanley Cup Final this season as the only seeds left are ranked #1 and #2. You could almost call the Western Conference Finals the Stanley Cup Final. There are always surprises though.