A look at team's strengths of schedules so far

[studentized 166]

 

As of writing this, we are now 202 full VHL games into the season. This just under halfway of the season, so I thought I'd take a look at who's had some of the more favourable matchups thus far. The table above shows for each team, the points percentage (= (2 * wins + 1 * OTL) / (2 * GP)) of the opponents they've faced so far vs the average points percentage for all possible opponents (i.e the points percentage excluding that team since they can't play themselves). A team with a weak strength of schedule so far would be one who's opponent points percentage is smallest relative to their average points percentage and vice-versa for strongest.

 

By nature of Davos and New York being the two worst teams AND by having not yet played each other, they both come out with the hardest strength of schedule so far. They will meet four times later this season so the long awaited "battle of the suck" will have to wait until then. The teams who've been on the easier side so far are all EU conference teams. This is largely again in thanks to Davos being so bad and the fact that EU teams will player other EU teams 8 times per season while only playing NA teams 5-6 times per. Still, when comparing within a conference we can see that some teams have had it easier. so far Malmo, Helsinki and Moscow have had slightly favourable schedules while Riga and Prague have not. Riga is just sitting 3 and 4 points back of Moscow and Malmo respectively, so look for them to close the gap or even jump them in the remaining part of the season. Vancouver also has a similar story, sitting very close to the top spot but yet to have played Davos. This should give them another 7-8 points easily, so consider them still to be favourites for finishing atop the VHL regular season.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 1, 2019 by studentized