Western conference extra points

[ionthesparrow]

So last night on twitter, @duckgirlie responded to a comment I made about how the West is currently owning the East, at least in terms of overall standings points.

Conversation here

I should point out that I don't know Zoe, but I adore following her on twitter, and that this response contained Exactly the right amount of snark that I think underlines all the best sports exchanges.

But anyway. It got me thinking: does the West lead the East in points standings because they're getting more "extra" points?

To NHL.com!

As of this morning teams from the East had accumulated 38 Extra points.
And the West... 38 extra points.

Huh, okay, but maybe the West is disproportionally scoring those extra points against teams from the West? (West on West OT action = 3 points stay in the conference; West on East OT action = only 1 point stays in the conference, yes?)

Against the East, the East has scored 19 extra points.
Against the East, the West has scored 14 extra points.

Against the West, the East has scored 19 extra points.
Against the West, the West has scored 24 extra points.

Oh, that is interesting.

Okay. So now say you take away all the extra points that the West has gained against the West?

You start with the standings looking like this:


Then if you subtract the extra points from the total points, you end up like this:


ooh, I like this


We'll leave the other extra points alone because they were more or less evenly distributed. But anyway, this means that instead of being in the 8th place, your #1 seed Bruins are now in fifth place. Additionally, Tampa Bay would eek into the top 10.

So rest easy, Eastern Conference. It could be worse.

Comments

[duckgirlie]

Interesting! The stat I was looking at was ROW, to eliminate both extra points and shootout wins (because pretty much everyone hates the shootout) which puts four Eastern conference teams back into the top ten league wide. It seems to imply at least a little that western teams tend to have more close games? I haven't quite worked up a conclusion about it without checking individual scores for each game, but that would seem to track with ~conventional wisdom~ about the west favouring more defensive low-scoring games whereas thr east favours more offense-heavy play.

This is putting me in the mood to go on a super-nerdy stats-tracking spree, but my internet is limited right now :(

[jedusaur]

I don't know about the percentage of close games, but the West has definitely not been having more low-scoring games. The top six teams by goals-for per game are all in the West, the bottom six are all in the East, and the rest look pretty evenly divided.

[ionthesparrow]

I think the easiest read out for "close games" is probably goal differential, with the logic that even if a team were winning a lot of games, if they were close ones (ie one goal games) their GD wouldn't be very high. If you sort the teams this way (again, current 11/20) you get:

1. STL
2. SJS
3. COL
4. BOS
5. LAK
6. TOR
7. CHI
8. ANA
9. TBL
10. PIT
11. MON
12. WAS
13. PHX
14. MIN
15. DAL
16. VAN
17. WIN
18. OTT
19. NJD
20. DET
21. NYR
22. NYI
23. PHI
24. COL
25. NSH
26. CAR
27. CAL
28. FLA
29. EDM
30. BUF

so, naturally that roughtly echoes the standings, but I think the teams that moved are interesting. For example, it suggests Chicago has been winning a lot of close games, and that Boston and Toronto have been significantly outscoring opponents.

It's also fun to look at in light of what the "accepted narrative" is re a lot of teams (ie Chicago's phenom defense and LAK's lack of goalscoring)

Then again, standard disclaimer: small sample size, etc, etc.