#1 vs #2 (and true nhl standings)

(preamble)

I've rallied against how the NHL standings are organized for a while. Well, I finally found a good resource that calculates by percentage of points possible.

LINKS:   league standings  -  conference standings  -  division standings

There's another site that doesn't do it as cleanly or well, and takes 30 seconds to update, but does have archived standings. current standings  -  archive

- - -

Two weeks ago, the Avalanche visited the Blues. At the time of the game, here were the overall NHL standings:

The Avs lost 7-3 on the road, and then lost again, part of a three-game losing streak. Those losses dropped them as low as #5 in the league:

Since then, the Avs have won 3 in a row. At home vs Chicago, on the road vs Phoenix and LA. Those teams currently are 4th, 9th and 6th in the league standings, respectively.

Which brings us to tonight. The Avs' 3 game winning streak is only bested by the Blues' 4 game hot streak. And we've got another #1 vs #2 matchup.

If you compare the above standings with the typical standings, you see why I'm so irked by the traditional method.

To make it clear, here is how virtually every media source puts the teams in order:

4, 7, 1, 3, 6, 5, 2, 8, 9, 11, 10.

Not very helpful when you're trying to find the actual order. Especially irksome when you see shit like this:

A couple more notes about the current true standings. Here's what that site has to say about the division abbreviations following the team names:

So there you go. We can see that 3 of the top 4 teams in the league are in the Central. And 8 of the top 9 teams are in the West.

One last note. 

Here are the best records for the last five 82 game seasons:

2011-12: Vancouver - 111 points
2010-11: Vancouver - 117 points
2009-10: Washington - 121 points
2008-09: San Jose - 117 points
2007-08: Detroit - 115 points

Now let's go back to the current standings. If you look at the last column, you see there are four teams that are on pace to have more than 121 points this year.

Clearly, I don't think that pace is sustainable/realistic. But I am impressed that there are that many teams winning so many games more than a quarter of the season in.