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.