IPB Looks At The Standings For The First Time

After last night’s bonanza of crap from the Devils, we’ve realized that we have absolutely nothing constructive to say about our favorite team (and the ostensible subject of this blog). We also have very little to say about them that isn’t constructive. It just… suck. And who even knows what they’ll look like tomorrow. This year’s Devils is a maddening beast. So anyway, instead of going through the painful process of trying to think of something Devilly to talk about, we’re going to do something even more painful: look at the standings. We are willful ignorant of the standings for most of the season, but it’s gotten to the point where even we can no longer claim they’re not relevant. So… what have we got here?

1. Montreal (87 pts.)
2. NJ (86 pts.)
3. Carolina (79 pts.)
4. Pittsburgh (85 pts.)
5. Ottawa (85 pts.)
6. Rangers (83 pts.)
7. Boston (80 pts.)
8. Philadelphia (79 pts.)
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9. Buffalo (75 pts.)
10. Washington (72 pts.)
11. Florida (72 pts.)
12. Toronto (72 pts.)
13. Islanders (71 pts.)
14. Atlanta (68 pts.)
15. Tampa (62 pts.)

Okay, we’re actually pretty familiar, despite our efforts not to be, with the top half of the EC standings — no big surprises there. We’d kind of forgotten Boston exists, so they’re a tiny bit unexpected in the top eight, but it’s not like we thought any of the bottom seven teams were there in their place (maybe we thought there were only going to be seven EC teams making the playoffs this year? It’s hard to say. But the point is that we’d kind of lost track of the Bruins for a while). And as for the Rangers? Well, the unbalanced schedule giveth and the unbalanced schedule taketh away — on the one hand, we had to play a cluster of Rangers games at the start of the year, and we’ve got three more in our last 12, a fact that makes us want to throw ourselves in front of an oncoming train. But on the other hand, we’ve gone months without seeing them, and an out-of-sight Rangers team is a good Rangers team in our books. The fact that they are actually good is something we’re not going to think about until next week and the Devils have to play them.

Now, the bottom seven is a very interesting sight for these standings-ignorers. First of all, there’s the obvious incongruity of Washington being in tenth place, despite a hype machine that had us thinking they should be up there with Detroit. But we’re not entirely surprised by that, because our anti-hype backlash reflex has made us gleefully revel in every point the Caps have lost over the last two months. The real shocker is Toronto. We don’t pay super-close attention to the Toronto media, but we’ve been hearing these “the Leafs are still in it!” rumblings that had us thinking they were at least kind of close. But dude. They’re tied with Florida. How do the Leafs media people look at themselves in the mirror every morning?

The most upsetting thing we’re seeing now that we’re looking at the standings in earnest is that our hopes for the Devils getting Tampa in the first round are probably not going to come true. Trust us when we say, Tampa, that your playoff fortunes would have been much improved if you’d unloaded that Lecavalier guy.

1. Detroit (98 pts.)
2. San Jose (90 pts.)
3. Calgary (82 pts.)
4. Dallas (89 pts.)
5. Anaheim (86 pts.)
6. Colorado (82 pts.)
7. Minnesota (81 pts.)
8. Vancouver (80 pts.)
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9. Nashville (78 pts.)
10. Phoenix (75 pts.)
11. Edmonton (73 pts.)
12. Chicago (73 pts.)
13. Columbus (73 pts.)
14. St. Louis (69 pts.)
15. Los Angeles (60 pts.)

And on that other planet we like to call the “Western Conference”, things are way wackier than we’d been led to believe. For starters, there are not ten teams in the West with more points than every team in the East. We were under the impression that if the conference system was junked and the top 16 teams in the league made the playoffs, all 15 WC teams would get in ahead of the best the East has to offer. How disappointing to see that’s not the case.

Also disappointing? The reports of Detroit’s demise seem to have been, on paper at any rate, premature. We thought they’d fallen off the rails, but here they are with an eight-point lead! You know, the WC is awfully overrated — when the EC front-runner falls apart, they really fall apart, but in the West they just keep holding onto an insurmountable lead. There’s so much they can learn from us. We also thought that another knock on the EC was that we have the super-shitty division that makes a mockery of the home-ice seedings, but what’s all this with the Calgary/Colorado/Minnesota/Vancouver vortex of relative suck vying for home ice? We had no idea the WC had some of the same problems the EC does — we thought they were perfect.

Anyway, the top eight looks like seven teams we can, depending on any variety of factors (unfortunate first-round match-up, previously unobtrusive fanbase that suddenly becomes insufferable, heretofore undiscovered hotties, etc), either get behind in the playoffs or learn to loathe with the passion of a thousand suns, and the Avalanche. We’re going to put it in writing right now: whichever team can knock the Avs down to ninth place will become IPB’s Official Favorite Western Conference Team come the start of the postseason. We mean it.

The bottom seven, meanwhile, has left us depressed: we guess our hopes for the Devils getting someone easy like the Kings should they get out of the East aren’t coming true, either.

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