Parity Between The Conferences
I’ve generally been under the impression that the Western Conference is stronger and harder to make the playoffs in general. Rightly or wrongly, I always seem to recall the teams in the West having to get more points to make the playoffs then our guys over in the East (and yet the Leafs still manage to miss every year). I took a look though to see if there is any real evidence of that, going back a couple years. Sure seems that this season there is some pretty good parity across the league.
Some notes on this year. The Western Conference teams pick up 1.11 points per game in the standings vs the East, who grab 1.10 … pretty close. Pretty much a deadlock. 8th place in the East right now? Washington with 50 points. In the West? The Wild with 51 points. Edge West. Worst team in the East? Tampa, Islanders and Hurricanes all have 40 points. In the West … Columbus has 31 points, Anaheim 37, and Edmonton 38. Some pretty awful teams in the West. Top Team? Rangers in the East with 62 points, Red Wings in the West with 61 points. So 30 points separate 1st and last in the West yet only 22 points separate the two in the East. Real tough going over in the East as their is no one to really pick on. So if anything, there is more parity in the East but when the Conferences collide this year, it’s been pretty much even.
What about goal scoring? This year the Eastern Conference scores more (2.84 goals per game vs 2.69 from the West) but they give up more as well (2.86 goals per game vs 2.67 per game from the West). So the West is slightly better from a +/- perspective but the difference is pretty negligible.
What about in years past? Last season the West earned 1391 standings points (1.13 per game) vs 1366 points from the East (1.11 per game). The year before? The West had 1415 standings points (1.15 per game) vs 1346 points from the East (1.09 per game). So there was an edge in the West, one that has been slowly deteriorating. It’s not much though. Last year it took 97 points to make the playoffs in the West vs 93 in the East. The year before … 95 in the West vs 88 in the East. A definite advantage to being in the Eastern Conference. Looks as though there are more solid clubs in the West, at least in years past, and a couple teams over there that everyone picked on and earned ‘easy’ points against. There is more parity in the East it would seem.
This season it’s pretty much a dead heat at this point. We’ll see how things evolve, see if the good teams in the West take advantage of Columbus and Edmonton and make it harder to get into the playoffs, at least points wise, than the East. Looks like competitively though, the Eastern teams have a harder go of it, facing better quality opponents as there just aern’t those real bottom feeding clubs.
Mr. E
January 19th, 2012 at 1:23 am #
Interesting to point out that with their win tonight, the Avs improved to 10-2 against the East this season. This obviously doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things… but just a fun stat that pertains to the debate!
HHCIB
January 19th, 2012 at 5:42 pm #
That leaves the Avs with a pretty dismal record against their own conference