Projected NHL Standings

It’s the time of year where every team is trying to decide whether or not they should make a run for the playoffs and the Stanley Cup or if they should start looking at potential trade partners for their veteran players. I thought it would be interesting to try and project the final standings based on statistics from the first part of the season.

I’ll spare you all the details but by using a regression based on data from the past 10 NHL seasons, I was able to find a formula that increases the predictability of the standings by about 20%. This formula of course includes a team’s points per game in the first four months of the season, but it also includes the team’s points per game from the past month as well as the goal differential from the past month.

With that said, here are the projected standings by conference:

GP
Pts
Proj. Pts
GP
Pts
Proj. Pts
NY Islanders
46
63
109
Anaheim
47
68
113
Montreal
45
61
106
St. Louis
46
62
111
NY Rangers
44
58
106
Nashville
45
65
111
Detroit
47
63
105
Chicago
47
62
104
Tampa Bay
48
64
105
Winnipeg
48
60
102
Pittsburgh
46
60
102
Vancouver
45
55
99
Washington
46
57
100
Calgary
47
53
93
Boston
48
57
97
San Jose
48
56
93
Florida
44
50
92
Dallas
46
49
92
Ottawa
46
47
87
Los Angeles
47
52
90
Toronto
48
47
82
Colorado
48
50
87
Columbus
45
43
81
Minnesota
46
46
84
Philadelphia
48
45
80
Arizona
46
37
69
New Jersey
47
42
80
Edmonton
47
33
68
Carolina
46
37
74
Buffalo
47
31
59

It’s not a perfect science and things will certainly be different than what you see up here at the end of the season but it does give some interesting insight. The most interesting one is that despite the Los Angeles Kings being right being the Calgary Flames for the last playoff spot, they have been struggling of late while the Flames and Canucks have been playing well and are expected to move up the standings. They’re also expected to get some stiff competition from the Dallas Stars.

Despite this being a more accurate portrait than the actual standings, the average margin of error is still +/- 5 points so if your team is still within 5 points of a playoff spot, odds aren’t on your side but there’s still hope.

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