High Tide in the Atlantic
by Ben Rothenberg on Nov 5, 2009 1:41 PM EST
in Features
16 comments
For the last several days, all five Atlantic Division teams--the Penguins, Rangers, Devils, Flyers, and Islanders--have been in the top seven of the standings in the Eastern conference, their supremacy interrupted only by the respective division leaders of the Southeast and Northeast Divisions.
It's probably not reasonable to expect all five Atlantic teams to make it into the playoffs this year. Based on their starts, Ottawa, Buffalo, and Boston should all have a pretty good chance of making it into the playoffs out of the Northeast, as will Carolina from the Southeast if they can turn things around. And though they are currently in the #7 slot, the Islanders have still only won five of their first fifteen games.
But even if five Atlantic teams in to the playoffs, there's a pretty good chance there will be four. Since divisional realignment began in the 1998-1999 season, the Atlantic Division has never sent fewer than three teams to the playoffs, a mark to which no other division comes close.
There have been four Atlantic Division representatives in the playoffs each of the last three years. No division had ever sent four teams to the playoffs on three separate occasions, much less in a consecutive, back-to-back-to-back fashion as the Atlantic did in 2007, 2008, and 2009.
Here are some more things you may not know about the illustrious Atlantic:
- The Atlantic is by far the most compact of the league's six divisions. The two most distant locales in the division, Mellon Arena and Nassau Colliseum, are a mere 336 miles apart.
- The Atlantic is the only division in which all five teams have won a Stanley Cup, with no other division having more than three previous Cup winners. Not only has every team in the division won a Stanley Cup, every team has done it at least twice.
- In the 2008 Playoffs, the none of the four Atlantic Division teams lost to a non-Atlantic foe until the Stanley Cup Finals, when Pittsburgh lost to Detroit.
After the jump, a highlight reel of each Atlantic Division team beating another Atlantic Division team in the first month of the season. Because not only do we have some good teams here in the Atlantic Division, we've also got some semblance of parity.
Flyers @ Devils 5-2 10/3/09
Penguins @ Islanders 4-3 SO 10/3/09
Rangers @ Devils 3-2 10/5/09
Devils @ Penguins 4-1, 10/24/09
Rangers @ Islanders 1-3 10/28/09
0 recs |
16 comments
| Add comment
|
Email
Print
Comments
No division had ever sent four in back-to-back years previously
Your graph show that the Pacific Division sent 4 in both 1999 and 2000. I double-checked the stats to make sure. Stars, Ducks, ’Yotes, Sharks in 1999; Stars, Kings, ’Yotes, Sharks in 2000.
Yikes, don’t know how I missed that. Fixed.
Thanks for the catch there.
The Daily Forehand -- SB Nation's Tennis Destination.
Broad Street Hockey.
by Ben Rothenberg on Nov 5, 2009 2:07 PM EST up reply actions
Nice post Ben.
The Central division was declared by some as the best division in hockey last season, but I don’t think the Atlantic gets enough respect for how good it truly is.
Broad Street Hockey - SB Nation's Philadelphia Flyers Blog. Makin' it look mean since 1967.
A former co-worker and I spent our lunch break a season or two ago mathematically figuring out whether or not all givne teams in a division can make the playoffs. We more or less concluded that it’s almost impossible. Inter-conference play may improve the odds a bit, but just barely. I really wish I would’ve saved the “worksheet,” but if I recall correctly said worksheet was actually a dry erase board in the conference room.
Right off the bat though you have to give three of the eight spots to the division leaders in the others. So that leaves only five spots for the entire Atlantic, one guaranteed for the Atlantic division leader. So now four spots for the four remaining Atlantic teams and the odds were pretty high that an Atlantic team beating another Atlantic team would stand as the sole reason behind one team out of the four not making it.
Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.
Possible, however unlikely
The other divisions would have to suck pretty badly.
Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?
Right off the bat though you have to give three of the eight spots to the division leaders in the others. So that leaves only five spots for the entire Atlantic, one guaranteed for the Atlantic division leader. So now four spots for the four remaining Atlantic teams and the odds were pretty high that an Atlantic team beating another Atlantic team would stand as the sole reason behind one team out of the four not making it.
You screwed up the math there.
Its 8 playoff spots, 3 guaranteed to a division winner, 1 of which comes from atlantic.
That leaves five playoff spots from the other four teams.
Dur. Yeah. I was tossing around a lot of numbers. Guess I screwed that one up.
Either way, you get the point. At the end of the year it’s interesting to see exactly how many points a team accumulated within the division. That can give ya a rough idea of how feasible it really is.
Honestly, I don’t really consider myself a stats guy (obvious from the blip above). I’m reading a book right now by Jayson Stark (ya know, former Philly Inquirer/Phillies writer Jayson Stark) and this guy is so hung up on quantifying a player’s overall greatness to stats. 100 pages in and it’s giving me a headache. Guess that’s baseball for ya.
Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.
Weird, I didn’t think Stark was really a stats guy either.
Broad Street Hockey - SB Nation's Philadelphia Flyers Blog. Makin' it look mean since 1967.
by Travis Hughes on Nov 5, 2009 10:37 PM EST up reply actions
It’s called “The Stark Truth.” Quick read. But he breaks this down like, “A lineup full of Rizzuto’s would win .494 of their games.” Some things are interesting – like how Howard Johnson is the only guy to ever get 30 HR, 30 SB and 30 errors in a season. But he really stretches it too much at some points.
Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.
Interesting, but keeping in mind that teams play less intra-division games now, would that effect those calculations?
Broad Street Hockey - SB Nation's Philadelphia Flyers Blog. Makin' it look mean since 1967.
Guess it’s worth over analyzing again I suppose. I may have a little car ride ahead of me this Saturday. Perhaps I’ll crack out the notebook and pen and give it a shot.
Follow the Penguins on SBN @ Pensburgh.com and twitter.
I can get this started…
Each team plays 24 games within its division. That leaves 58 extra-division games. 92 points is a reliable number to make the playoffs in the east. The problem is, 3 point games are an incalculable variable. I’m not sure where to go from that point.
Abstractly, I think we can say that the division teams would all need to go close to .500 with a handful of three point games. So let’s award 28 intra-division points. That would then require 64 points in 58 extra-division games.
That’s rather feasible, especially given how atrocious the South East is. The Flyers have 7 games that division and have walked away with 10 points in those games.
But more than anything else, its really the fact that there haven’t been many intra-division games in the atlantic.
24/82 means 29.2% of each teams’ games are intra-division. Here’s a chart of the Atlantic schedule:
Flyers 2/12 – 16.7%
Pens 4/15 – 25.7%
Devils 4/13 – 30.7%
Isles 2/15 – 13.3%
Rangers 4/17 – 23.5%
Only the Devils are ahead of pace for intra-division games, with the Flyers and Isles way off the pace. I calculated these manually, so I don’t know what the deal is, but I assume that all of the teams are behind in divisional play. Which suggests then that the Atlantic is better than the rest of the league, but when everyone has to start infighting, you’ll see divisions with more talent discrepency separate themselves and the top teams should all rise above the Atlantic teams fighting it out in the middle. (The Caps, for instance, have played only 2/15 intra-divisional games.)
This is just a gut feeling (i.e. I haven’t looked at it numbers-wise), but it feels like most intra-division games are later in the season. If that turns out to be correct, I would assume it’s a deliberate effort to reduce team travel right before the playoffs, so that players can be at their best for the big show, as well as making those late games more important, since beating the other team is both points for you and denying points to a division rival.
"When you make your final stand
I'll be right there
I'll never leave
And all I ask of you is
Believe"
That’s a play right out of baseball’s playbook. I don’t have the numbers either, but the last few games of the season are always against divisional opponents. They do it to make the games more meaningful so they can have those awesome storylines down the stretch. It seemingly always plays out that way in baseball (Twins vs Tigers this season) and it sometimes works out in hockey, but since there’s a conference-based playoff format in the NHL, it doesn’t always work out according to plan.
Broad Street Hockey - SB Nation's Philadelphia Flyers Blog. Makin' it look mean since 1967.
by Travis Hughes on Nov 6, 2009 2:48 PM EST up reply actions
One thing I probably should have put in the article is how very close the Central came to accomplishing the feat last year. Nashville fell short within the last two games.
The Daily Forehand -- SB Nation's Tennis Destination.
Broad Street Hockey.
Something to say? Choose one of these options to log in.
On Facebook? Use Connect to join SB Nation. Share insights with fans and friends.- » Create a new SB Nation account
- » Already registered with SB Nation? Log in!
Secondary Sidebar
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recent FanPosts
Atlantic Standings
| GP | W | L | OTL | PT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
New Jersey
|
82 | 48 | 27 | 7 | 103 |
|
Pittsburgh
|
82 | 47 | 28 | 7 | 101 |
|
Philadelphia
|
82 | 41 | 35 | 6 | 88 |
|
New York Rangers
|
82 | 38 | 33 | 11 | 87 |
|
New York Islanders
|
82 | 34 | 37 | 11 | 79 |
(updated 4.12.2010 at 9:21 AM EDT)
Flyers Schedule
Next 5 Games
|
New Jersey
|
Tue 09/21 | 7:00 PM EDT |
|
@
Toronto
|
Thu 09/23 | 7:00 PM EDT |
|
@
Toronto
|
Fri 09/24 | 7:00 PM EDT |
|
@
Minnesota
|
Sat 09/25 | 8:00 PM EDT |
|
@
New Jersey
|
Tue 09/28 | 7:00 PM EDT |
Last 5 Games
|
Chicago
|
Wed 06/09 | OT - L 3 - 4 |
|
@
Chicago
|
Sun 06/06 | L 4 - 7 |
|
Chicago
|
Fri 06/04 | W 5 - 3 |
|
Chicago
|
Wed 06/02 | OT - W 4 - 3 |
|
@
Chicago
|
Mon 05/31 | L 1 - 2 |
SBNation.com Recent Stories
In Association With
Latest Puck Daddy - NHL from Yahoo! Sports
- Montreal's Price talks new 2-year contract, expectations post-Halak
- Donald Fehr aware of Kovalchuk drama, mum on everything else
- Puck Headlines: Savard's agent rants on Bettman; Halak in Montreal
- Boudreau, Crawford placed on the coaching hot seat
- NHL 2010-11 Season Preview: Wrestling with Atlanta Thrashers
Certain photos copyright © 2010 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
