Quarter point of season and US Thanksgiving - standings so far

[Finger Cookin]

With just over a quarter of the season done, the Flames stand 3rd in the Pacific. Tied in points with the Canucks for the first wildcard, but in third due to having a game in hand. Teams 8 through 13 in the conference are all only 2 points back of the Flames, with most having played the same 21 games as the Flames, a couple of teams (SJ and COL) with a game in hand, and DAL having played one more game.

Playoff chances wise, the Flames start the season with a 53.33% (8 out 15 teams qualify) chance of making the playoffs. At just past the quarter way point, the Flames now stand a 46.7% chance (weighted) or a 59.6% chance (coin flip) chance of making the playoffs. They haven't made any ground, but they haven't dug a hole either. In fact, if the remaining 3/4 play out the exact same way, the Flames will finish with 96-97 points, which should all but guarantee playoff hockey in April.

There's been bumps along the way and there have been some amazing stretches of incredible hockey by several players. Ultimately, the Flames are right in the thick of it so far and just need to keep doing what they've been doing so far to ensure they're in the playoffs at the end of the season.

Some team stats rankings beyond the standings:

Points %: 0.595 (10th)
GF/G: 2.86 (T-16th)
GA/G: 3.05 (T-19th)
PP%: 21.6% (T-11th)
PK%: 72.6% (31st)
SF/G: 31.9 (14th)
SA/G: 33.1 (25th)
FO%: 49.0% (22nd)
SAT% (5 on 5): 51.81% (8th)
OZS% (5 on 5): 50.73% (15th)
S% + SV% (5 on 5): 1003 (15th)

The recent hot streaks have brought the team scoring up to respectable levels. Goals to concentrate on for the rest of the season are tightening up defensively and improving the woeful penalty killing.

[The Fonz]

I think their most glaring weakness is the PK - it needs to improve by 10-15%. If they're able to do that, then the GA should decrease by about 7 over the quarter. A 7-goal decrease in our GA over the 1st quarter would have us inside the top-10 in GA, and likely another win or two and leading our division.

We're close (assuming my head math holds up... lots of times it doesn't).

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

The recent hot streaks have brought the team scoring up to respectable levels. Goals to concentrate on for the rest of the season are tightening up defensively and improving the woeful penalty killing.

Those two and depth 5v5 offense.

The penalty killing will come around I'm sure. It was fine last year and I'm pretty sure none of these guys forgot how to set up a box. I'm more concerned about how routinely we're getting outshot. Need to work harder on cutting off shooting lanes and disallowing more uncontested zone entries.

[Torture]

Playoff chances wise, the Flames start the season with a 53.33% (8 out 15 teams qualify) chance of making the playoffs. At just past the quarter way point, the Flames now stand a 46.7% chance (weighted) or a 59.6% chance (coin flip) chance of making the playoffs. They haven't made any ground, but they haven't dug a hole either. In fact, if the remaining 3/4 play out the exact same way, the Flames will finish with 96-97 points, which should all but guarantee playoff hockey in April.

I don't understand how they're on pace for 96-97, are in a playoff spot right now, but weighted, have a less than 50% chance to make the playoffs.

Shouldn't their odds be better than at the beginning of the season given some teams are essentially out of the running at this point? (Phoenix, Edmonton, etc)

[Robbob]

I think the pk will go up. The fact that they let 4 goals in that Detroit game makes it worse than it is. 20% of the ppg we allowed were from that game.

I like where they are at on American turkey day as I believe they have more in them.

[edslunch]

Middle of the pack statistics put them as a bubble team, which is where they find themselves. With how close the standings are they really need to finish in a division spot and not rely on wild card, and home ice is critical for matchups, so they better shoot for 1 or 2, which are achievable if they pick it up a bit.

Good news is they are in the mix despite an uneven first quarter and surely they have more to give. I can't imagine the PL stays that bad - they were decent last year though I wonder if they miss Bouma, Chaisson or a younger Stajan. No one shed a tear when those guys left but it's hard to see that the current bottom 6 and PK are better.

Key thing to work on is goals against. Forget fancy stats, the single best predictor of team success is goal differential. If they don't turn that around big time they will be pretenders no matter what their record is.

It's getting time to make some hard decisions on the bottom 6. A quarter of the way through and those 8 guys have less than 10 goals combined???

Where does the team go with Bennett? After some promising signs he's back to not contributing and found himself on the 4th line last night. There's slumping and then there's this. If there's not a marked improvement by mid-season I think they have to look at shipping him out for mutual benefit.

Lazar is not contributing, time to take a chance and swap him wth Hathaway or Mangiapane. Lazar has honestly done nothing to warrant a spot since he was acquired.

Jagr to me looks old and slow. Still wiley and talented but I wonder if this experiment will fizzle out later this year. Hope not.....

D needs to get it's act together - mostly second pairing. Partner-swapping might be in order, and dealing back Brodie's responsibilities. I always thought PP time was in part a reward...maybe take that away for a bit?

More reasons for optimism than for panic, I don't think we've seen the best of this team yet.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by Torture

I don't understand how they're on pace for 96-97, are in a playoff spot right now, but weighted, have a less than 50% chance to make the playoffs.

Because there are 6 teams a mere two points below us in the conference, we've played one more home game then away game and we have a negative goal differential.

Frankly I don't assign a lot of value to sportsclubstats odds this early. There's still to much noise and not enough signal.

given some teams are essentially out of the running at this point? (Phoenix, Edmonton, etc)

I wouldn't count Edmonton out just yet. They're rapidly running out of runway but by my estimation if they perform the rest of the way the same as they did last year they'd be able to claim a WC spot. I think the next two weeks will basically decide their season. It's one thing to think a bottom two team can improve to the level of it's own prior year play, it's quite another to think they can play up to a Presidents Trophy pace.

[Strange Brew]

Yeah the goal differential and record in regulation probably don’t really lie. Team is on the bubble a quarter way through and is positioned to make a move.

Like others, I expect a call up to start to see Lazar’s ice time.

[CaptainCrunch]

If 94 points is the rough entry point to the wildcard spot. The Flames will need 69 points over the next 61 games which is basically 34 wins and a shooutout/ot loss so a record of 34 26 1, Right now the Pacific Division leader is Vegas and they are on track for 110 points, which means the Flames would need something like 42 wins and an over time loss to over take them for the division or 42 -18 - 1.

Edmonton to reach 94 points would need about 38 wins over their next 60 games or roughly 38-22 or a .633 winning percentage, last year they ran at about a .628 winning percentage. So they're at the point where they need not only a big string of wins, but at the same time are going to need some help.

[Finger Cookin]

Originally Posted by Torture

I don't understand how they're on pace for 96-97, are in a playoff spot right now, but weighted, have a less than 50% chance to make the playoffs.

It's basically because the schedule for the remainder of the season is harder than it has been so far, based on the standings at this exact moment. And also 61 games is a lot of time for a lot of things to go wrong or to change.

SCS just runs the numbers as they sit through millions of simulations to derive its numbers. I think it's a neat exercise. But it's not the be all and end all of how the season will go, either.

[Beninho]

Need more games like the last Washington game. Defense has been suspect at times this season but it does seem like Gio and Dougie have started to round back into form. Biggest question mark for the Flames is if Brodie can limit his brain farts and start to play sound defensive hockey. Still not convinced him and Hamonic are good together. Team is built for the defense to be its strength so Brodie getting out of this funk is imperative for a successful rest of the season.

[Erick Estrada]

It's a better start than last season but there's still a lot of improvements that need to be made. The goaltending has been much improved as has the play of the first line, 2nd line is about the same but everything else has kind of dropped off from last season's team as the defensive play is worse as and secondary scoring has dropped off as the bottom six have not produced much of anything offensively. Personally I think the team can still succeed with the lack of secondary scoring but if they can't improve their defensive play and reduce the giveaways this will not be an overly happy place in April.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Finger Cookin

It's basically because the schedule for the remainder of the season is harder than it has been so far, based on the standings at this exact moment. And also 61 games is a lot of time for a lot of things to go wrong or to change.

SCS just runs the numbers as they sit through millions of simulations to derive its numbers. I think it's a neat exercise. But it's not the be all and end all of how the season will go, either.

Yeah, I get how sports club stats puts the numbers together, but intuitively the odds shouldn't go down for a team that's currently in a spot where other teams they'll be competing with need to pass them or in the case of the Oilers and Phoenix, go on improbable runs.

At the beginning of the season every team (theoretically) has equal chances of making the playoffs. Now we're 1/4 of the way in and you're in a playoff spot, intuitively your chances should go up, not down because teams need to pass you and other teams have worse odds.

If you did a CP poll on the odds the Flames made the playoffs at this point in the season they'd probably be a bit more confident at this point in the season than at the beginning, and probably rate it as a higher chance than 46%.

IDK. Just saying it seems odd.
It's like when the fancy stats don't match what you're seeing.

[Finger Cookin]

Taking the sims and weighting out of the analysis, the Flames are 2 points back of the division lead, 1 point back of second in the Pacific, tied for the first wild card, and two points up on teams 8 through 13. That's 5 playoff spots up for grabs among 10 teams.

Ignoring the top three and bottom two divisional spots as being further away than 2 points at the moment, that changes the odds from the beginning of the season (8/15, 53.33%) to 5/10 (50.00%). Then throw in all the sims and team record comparisons, and that explains a bit why a team currently in a playoff spot might have less than a 50% chance of keeping it.

[Caged Great]

The team has played like crap for the first dozen or so games of the year. The team is starting to figure things out like they did a season ago around this time. If that continues to repeat as it has for a few seasons now, then the Flames should be primed for takeoff any time now.

[Toonage]

The past 2 seasons have seen the Flames go on winning streaks of varying lengths in December. I look forward to that again.

[Itse]

I'm not worried. Barring major injury issues I think we'll comfortably be a playoff team.

Backup goaltending worries me a bit though.

[Steve Bozek]

It’s still too early to be making meaningful projections. Teams are still refining their rosters and some of the players have yet to get into top shape or get the line chemistry going. For the Flames, the bottom 6 forwards still need sorting out, Jankowski and Hamonic look like they’re just settling in; the backup goalie situation isn’t settled; and I’m sure other teams close to the Flames in the standings are going through similar growing pains. All it would take would be a 4 or 5 game losing or winning streak, for the Flames or their rivals to be in very different projected playoff shape. IIRC, Anaheim looked pretty much out of contention around this time last year....