Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
I much prefer the team playing competitively as they are right now but October play is largely worthless when trying to determine where a team will finish. When the early season excitement turns into a job and the winter grind begins is where the pretenders start falling off the pace.
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Agreed here. I can't remember which coach it was, but I remember him saying the first 1/4 of the season, anything can happen, but the middle 2/4-3/4 of the season is where the grind of the NHL will hit you and seperate the man from the boys (Treliving mentions this often). Oddly though, the last quarter of the season you see a bunch of basement dwellers start to win again (nothing to lose) and contenders losing more often then not to a those basement dwellers.