Best in The West

I got in a fight with my father the other night.  He doesn’t like the fact that his daughter knows more about hockey than he does.  The man used to coach DU and knows more about hockey than anyone else I know (other than myself).  The debate was this: which conference is more competitive, East or West?

Before we get into my favorite nitty gritty part, the statistics (which speak for themselves I might add), let me just say that my father is a die hard Rangers fan.  And I think the readers here at Thin Air Sports are all die hard Avalanche fans, just like myself.  My dad isn’t an Avalanche fan… at all.  In fact, for my 19th birthday the two of us met in Detroit for an Avs game at the Joe Louis Arena on my birthday.  And while I dared to walk in there with an Avs jersey on (no judging, but it was a Dan Hinote jersey) and a RED WINGS SUCK shirt on underneath, my father bought a Brett Hull baseball cap just to fit in.  So it’s safe to say that any stand I take on hockey, he will disagree with me just to disagree.

Another small piece of factual history: I’ve been a bit mad at Rangers fans lately, because the last time I went to a Rangers game at the Garden I got in a fight with a large man.  I thought we were bonding over a mutual respect for Sidney Crosby when I told him I was an Avs fan and he made the mistake of saying to me that I could “Sakic his balls.”  I wasn’t a fan of that much.  Subsequently I told his small, skinny friend to “put a muzzle” on the Sakic-hater.  I haven’t rooted for the Rangers since.

But nasty words and backstabbing aside, back to our debate.  Which conference is more competitive, East or West?  I can answer the question easily: West.  As I mentioned before, the stats speak for themselves.  Anyone who wants to argue with me, check out the numbers, and then get back to me.

As of Friday morning, our number one seeds are one point apart: Boston at the top in the East with 88 and San Jose on top in the West with 87.  So there isn’t one specific team that is running away with the lead in either conference.  But the answer to our question isn’t who is in 1st, but rather who is at the bottom?  Right now at the very bottom of the East with only 40 points we have the New York Islanders.  Ouch.  And in the West, our beloved Colorado Avalanche are in 15th (just FYI one small tear leaked out the side of my eye as I typed that) with 55 points.

That is a HUGE difference hockey fans.  The worst in the West has 15 more points than the worst in the East (and has ten more wins).  What’s beyond that, is that the 14th place team in the East, the Atlanta Thrashers, is 8 points ahead of the Islanders.  In the West we’ve got a tie for 14th, with both the St Louis Blues and Phoenix Coyotes sitting with 57 points — only two above the Avs.

The obvious point I am trying to make here — and call me blind and biased if you have too — but it is much more plausible that the Avs will make the playoffs before the Islanders will.  The Islanders would have to score over 25 points (26 to get to 8th) and that is assuming that every other team in between lost every single game in the next month and a half.  In the West, the Avs are less than 10 points out of a playoff spot (8 points to 8th!).  That doesn’t even take in to consideration the eventual collapse of 5th seed Vancouver which we ALL know is coming.  And Dallas won’t make it out of the first round if they even make it there at all.

I know I’m an Avs fan, but those numbers speak for themselves.  While I’m not going to sit here and preach that the Avs can still make the playoffs, in the West we don’t have to give up hope.  Not only do the Islanders fans have to give up hope, they have to find a way to give up that lengthy and expensive DiPietro contract.

See you next time hockey fans!