Claimed: 2/2 What is this Calgary/Seattle Race?

[CowboyinAmerica 2,761]

 

Early Season Leads to Unexpected Playoff Race

 

Game 130 marks a little over one-third of the way through Season 56, and as expected your six playoff teams are Quebec, Riga, Toronto, Davos, Helsinki and… Seattle? Wait, that must be a typo.

 

Except that, through 26 games, the Bears are sitting with 25 points and the expected-to-be-playoff-bound Wranglers are only at 23 points. To be sure, this isn’t where either team expected to be at this point in the season, with Seattle gearing up for another lottery and Calgary making moves in the offseason to add veterans. And while there’s no indication that these trends will last, one-third of the season isn’t a flash in the pan either.

 

So why is Seattle scorching (well, relatively) and Calgary down in the dumps? Here are three stats that can help explain the discrepancy:

 

1. That Strength of Schedule

When looking at why one team is underperforming, the first place I always look is what teams they’ve played – just remember Davos’s weak start last year before storming back. And for certain, the Bears have played some easier teams. Seattle had a whopping 11 games against the bottom three teams in the standings thus far, totaling 42 percent of their total games. Calgary, meanwhile, has played those same three teams just 6 times. Once this evens out, Calgary is likely to pick up a few points in the standings just by nature of playing easier teams, and Seattle’s win percentage is going to get a lot worse when it has to play, say, an actual game against Davos.

 

2. Riding the Roller Coaster

While the Wranglers are lower in the standings than the Bears, the team actually has a much better goal differential, sitting at -6 as compared to the Bears’ -16. The reason has everything to do with blowouts. The Bears have losses like 7-2 to Quebec, 5-1 to Helsinki and 5-1 to Riga dotting the schedule, games that you can never reasonably say Seattle should have won, and would not have won even if a few more pucks bounced their way. But while Calgary also has a few of those losses, they also have something Seattle doesn’t have many of: decisive wins against good teams, like 4-0 against Davos, 5-2 also against Davos, and 2-0 against Toronto. Those decisive wins makes me think that the bad losses will become less bad in time, while I can’t say the same for the Bears.

 

3. Past the First Line

For a team that doesn’t have much TPE to go around, the Bears have surprisingly balanced scoring: Gabriel McAllister, Aleksei Federov, Asher Donovan, and Mattias Forsberg all have 25 points or more through 26 games, and each of those players sit in the top ten of their respective positions in point production. Calgary was expected to have much better production offensively given the TPE, but only center Marc-Alexandre Leblanc (29 points) and defenseman Felix Savard (also 29 points) sit above 20 points currently. The only other player in positional top tens is right winger Max von Hohenzollern, hanging on in 10th with 18 points. If Calgary truly wants to not only make the playoffs but give Toronto a run for its money, second line wingers like JourneyMan and The Process (1 point in 26 games!) will have to give the team at least something to work with.

 

All in all, I expect Calgary to be a playoff team by the end of the season, assuming that all things stay the same with rosters (and even that isn’t a guarantee). Still, some of these trends are concerning, and while I don’t think the early start says much about Seattle, Calgary fans should probably be concerned.

Edited August 27, 2017 by punkhippie

[Beaviss 4,949]

Review: 

 

Interesting read on how the bears team is doing. Well formatted Media Spot with pictures with stats included. In my opinion the bears are definitely an up and coming team with tons of potential. They haven't even gotten close to where they can be with all the good draft picks that are only going to get better. Now that I have gone off topic 10/10 article would bang read again.

[eaglesfan036 4,585]

Strength of schedule is correct, I am sure we will turn things around and make the playoffs, but the long term concerns are correct as we were supposed to make the jump this season to be a more competitive team.

[Dangles13 373]

7 minutes ago, eaglesfan036 said:

Strength of schedule is correct, I am sure we will turn things around and make the playoffs, but the long term concerns are correct as we were supposed to make the jump this season to be a more competitive team.

Nah, you suck and shouldn't have dumped my inactive ass. 

[eaglesfan036 4,585]

1 minute ago, Dangles13 said:

Nah, you suck and shouldn't have dumped my inactive ass. 

you suck and shouldn't be inactive

[Dangles13 373]

12 minutes ago, eaglesfan036 said:

you suck and shouldn't be inactive

I'm going to recreate soon and be soo good.

[Gudnason 607]

Review: Another great article from you as always. You always seem to be like an insider, finding important current points of the VHL to discuss or break down. Very methodical analysis at why Seattle is overachieving now, and why Calgary will probably get better as the schedule evens out.