November is Divisional Play Month

For those who don't know, November will be the month in which teams play the most games against teams within their own division.

In fact there are a total of 136 inter-divisional games to be played in the month of November (about 9/team) and 63 games against other opponents. This works out to 68% of all games played in November are inter-divisional games. To put this number into perspective, there will be 146 inter-divisional games played in December, January and February combined (about 50 per month).

By the end of November we should have a good idea where teams stand within their own divisions, but it will still be difficult to tell how these divisions will fit into the overall standings.

Why the NHL choose to do things this way is beyond me. I would expect the NHL to want to evenly distribute these games throughout the year. Last season the NHL was much more balanced in regards to these games, but it appears the NHL wanted to load all the inter-divisional games into two months.

March is also a big inter-divisional month, with 108 games. So in November and March account for over 50% of the inter-divisional games, but only 1/3 of the season.

Goaltending

It's been an interesting season for goaltending. A number of goaltenders moved in the off season, which of course changes the style of defense for the goalies who move. However, there have been other surprise as well:

Vancouver: Luongo - 0.896, slow start
Minnesota: Seems every goalie on Minnesota does well, but are they actually good?
Calgary: Kiprosoff doesn't look so good without the nice defense in front.
Nashville: Rolled the dice and lost - Mason is no Vokoun.
Blue Jackets: Leclaire may actually be the real deal...
Pheonix: Sent down Aebischer who has their best save percentage. Auld and Tellqvist vie for #1, need I say more
L.A: Found out how to win when all you have is AHL goaltending - Allow 17 shots.
N.J: No defense - No Brodeur...
Philadelphia: Why was Biron used as a backup last season?
Pittsiburg: Don't worry Fleury is still the same goalie he was last year, except with a bit more experience.
Boston: Did Fernandez hide behind Minnesota's defense?
Toronto: One more bad game for Raycroft and he might see some AHL action...
Atlanta: Don't blame the goalies please.
Florida: This team need a lot more than decent goaltending to do well.
Tampa: No changes from last year - still bad goaltending, but great offense.

Early season expected-standings.

West Name GD PCT DET 29 0.80 MIN 15 0.72 STL 10 0.63 CBJ 7 0.59 CGY 6 0.57 S.J 4 0.56 DAL 4 0.55 COL -1 0.48 VAN -3 0.46 PHX -3 0.45 ANA -10 0.37 CHI -14 0.34 L.A -13 0.33 NSH -13 0.31 EDM -25 0.20

East Name GD PCT OTT 25 0.74 PHI 13 0.69 CAR 15 0.68 NYI 11 0.64 BOS 5 0.59 T.B 6 0.58 MTL 6 0.57 PIT 3 0.53 BUF 2 0.53 TOR -4 0.46 NYR -6 0.44 N.J -11 0.36 FLA -15 0.33 WSH -15 0.31 ATL -25 0.23

The above standings represent the expected winning percentage for each team based on the quality of shots for and against each team has had or generated. If a team has better than average goaltending then they should outperform the above predictions and if they have worse than average goaltending they should under perform the above expectations.

This does not account for strength of competition, but is simply calcualted by: EGF²/(EGF²+EGA²)
Where EGF = expected goals for, EGA = expected goals against.

This is posted mainly to show which teams may be higher ranked in the standings than they probably will do over the course of the season.

4 Playoff Team Division

James Mirtle posted a while back that it isn't realistic to expect 4 teams from 1 division to make the playoffs. Tom Benjamin responded that: "I do agree that the most probable outcome will be two or three playoff teams from each division, but I do think four teams making it from one division will happen more frequently than he thinks"

I was under the impression that the divisional schedule would significantly effect the chance that 4 teams make the playoffs, but now in two seasons we've had 4 teams make the playoffs in 2006-2007 and in 2005-2006 Toronto had 90 points (2 away from a playoff spot), which would have made it 4 that year as well.

So, I decided to look into the chance of this actually happening. I have a script that simulates the whole season to do season predictions. I can randomize team skill or choose a certain skill level manually. A random distribution of skill produced a 63% chance of a 4 playoff team division and unbalancing one division jumped that number to 68%. I then decided to make every team identical (50% chance for every game) and that produced a even larger 69% chance. Either way there will be 4 teams who make the playoffs from one division 2 times out of 3 years based on my best analysis. In other words it's more common to have 4 teams make it from one division than not.

Average Predicted Standings

Name P L U DET 2 3 1 ANA 3 6 1 S.J 4 6 1 VAN 5 9 1 CGY 5 9 1 MIN 6 9 3 COL 6 10 1 DAL 7 11 3 NSH 9 13 5 STL 10 12 8 L.A 11 13 8 EDM 12 15 10 CHI 13 15 11 CBJ 13 15 10 PHX 15 15 14

Name P L U OTT 2 5 1 PIT 2 4 1 NYR 3 5 1 BUF 4 7 1 CAR 7 14 1 N.J 7 11 3 TOR 8 12 4 T.B 9 16 2 FLA 9 15 3 PHI 10 14 5 ATL 10 15 4 MTL 10 15 6 NYI 12 15 6 WSH 13 15 9 BOS 14 15 11

I like NHL standings predictions, because I find it interesting how wrong we can be. The above standings represent the average (P) of several different standings I found on the web (if you know of more I am more than happy to add them).

I have also included the minimum standing spot (L) and maximum standing spot (U) based on the variance of the predictions. For example the New York Islanders have had a lot of different predictions (from average to great to terrible) as such they have a very large expected range (anywhere from 4th to 15th), where as Phoenix has a very small range (15th). No one has predicted Phoenix to do better than 15th.

The above standings is the average of several different sites:
Bookies
Mirtle
Mirtle's Playoff poll
My opinion
McKeen's Hockey
The Hockey News
Added:
Alain Chantelois
Gaston Therrien
Howard Berger
David Johnson