Washington Capitals Hockey
Friday, March 21, 2008
All For Naught?
We've reached that point of the season where each win
seems essential and a single loss feels catastrophic. Those four
straight wins the Washington Capitals collected were great, but they
just don't seem like enough. Truth is, they may not be.
The Capitals are playing catchup. Therefore they are in
reliance of the play of those teams ahead of them, namely Carolina,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Buffalo -- with an honorable mention to
Florida who has caught fire and is stepping on the heels of the Caps.
But it's not just the Panthers, winners of seven straight before losing
to Carolina in OT, who are playing well: Buffalo has won three
straight, Philly has points in 10 of 13, and Carolina has won eight of
nine. So what happens if the pace continues?
Let's assume each team finishes out the season playing
as they have of late. What if we were to prorate each team's remaining
games to reflect the results of that same number of recent games (i.e.
Capitals have 7 games left and are 4-3-0 in their past seven games. Add
4-3-0 to their current record to achieve their final standing. Make
sense?) Though this is a rather rudimentary way to predict playoff
seedings, especially since head to head matchups are not taken into
account, this does shed a little bit of light on these teams' winning
trends.
Again, there is no statistical probability used in
determining the results nor is scheduling accounted for, just recent
success. So despite winning four of their last five, Washington's
wildly inconsistent play of late may prove their undoing.
After all, they say a picture is worth a thousand words.
In this case the picture is a chart, and that idiom holds true if the
words "MAYBE NEXT YEAR" are repeated 333 and a third times.
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