Remember back in October and early November when the
Metropolitan Division was kind of like that carton of eggs you bought at the
store, brought home, and realised that just about all of the eggs were busted
open already? We all had a good, hearty laugh (or cry, depends on where you
live I guess) over it early on, but it appears that we are finally starting to
make an omelet.
While the Atlantic Division was chugging along to start the
season, their neighbors in the Metro were struggling to even stay relevant. If
we look at the standings on December 1, the second place Washington Capitals,
with 30 points, would not even qualify for a Wild Card spot in the Atlantic.
Whether the Atlantic is starting to falter or the Metropolitan is starting to
catch up, things are starting to get interesting out in the East.
After the games on Monday, January 20, 23 points separate
the Pittsburgh Penguins at the top and the New York Islanders at the division’s
basement. If you take Pittsburgh out of the equation however, the two New York teams
sit at the extremes divided by 10 points and each of the seven teams having
played anywhere between 48 and 51 games.
The jostling for position gets even more segmented and
certainly a streak of two games or more in either direction could alter the balance
in short order. The Rangers and Flyers are separated by a single point and are shoving each other around to take a solid hold over the number two spot.
Columbus, Washington, New Jersey, and Carolina all sit within 3 points of each
other, the Blue Jackets having won each of their previous six games to bump the
Capitals and the Red Wings out of the East’s final Wild Card spot, and the
Islanders are just fighting to keep up. Nothing like a points logjam to make a
playoff race truly interesting.
One of the big things at play here is the interdivision
record. Overall, the Metro Division is 74-58-16 against itself. If you take out
Pittsburgh’s 16-5-0 record as well as the Islanders’ 4-11-3, the other six teams
have combined for 54-42-13 which makes them a hair under .500 overall in terms
of winning percentage against themselves.
By virtue of how the schedule works in the NHL
post-realignment, teams play interdivision for roughly 35% of 82 games. It
stands to reason that most teams that are postured for a postseason berth tend
to find a good deal of success when facing division foes, and history will
support this. When you consider that the 35% of games are played against 20-23%
of the teams, it becomes apparent how big of a mountain one has to climb should
a team find themselves on the wrong end of a four- or five-game season series.
The points system in its current format affords the chance to salvage some
positive opportunity, but this reliance quickly separates these teams from the
ranks that determine their own fates.
It should also be noted that the Metropolitan Division is
made up of teams that have jumped out to slow starts, at least as of last year.
The Capitals, Rangers, and Islanders all mounted late-season pushes to reach
the playoffs while the Blue Jackets missed out to the Wild for the 8-seed in the West by
virtue of the ROW tie-breaker. I guess it still is too soon to really be able
to weed out the good teams from the bad teams, or at least the ones shooting to
gain some dominance, now that the NHL has gone through its recent makeover.
This division is
sometimes referred to as the Meh-tropolitan Division and I can’t say that the
nickname hasn’t been earned. This grouping is shaping out to be so overall average
that vanilla ice-cream doesn’t even want to be seen at the games. Yet, while
the actual hockey isn’t the most compelling thing in the world, the playoff
race will certainly be something to keep an eye on. All it takes is for a team
to get hot at just the right time to turn heads come the postseason.
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