Elliotte Friedman was talking about this with Kerr the other day. He has had a friendly on-going debate with Holland. Holland likes the Thanksgiving date as a predictor - Freidman's research shows the date should be Nov 1st (or even earlier).
http://illegalcurve.com/2014/11/09/a...fter-15-games/
The importance of banking early season points becomes clearer when you understand that most playoff spots are determined by US Thanksgiving, which this year is November 27th.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman calculates it based on where a team is as of November 1st as he wrote in his 30 Thoughts column last week:
“If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I track a certain post-season stat: teams more than four points out of the playoffs on Nov. 1 face a serious fight to get in. Since 2003-04, only five clubs out of 40 that far behind on that date made it…..Winnipeg was five from the wild card, but just three in arrears of Minnesota for third in the Central. Therefore, upon further review, the Jets don’t count. The good news for this year’s qualifiers is that two teams did it last year, Dallas and Philadelphia. ”