Paul McCann: Mid Week Randoms

- Playoff “Tragic Numbers” - In the West… Dallas = 5, Winnipeg = 8, Los Angeles = 12. In the East… Carolina = 16, Tampa Bay = 16, New York Islanders = 19. (Stick tap to Damian Echecarrieta for this data)

What do these numbers mean?

What do these numbers mean?
- benderboots

I would assume that if they fail to get a point or lose ground on teams ahead of them their number shrinks.

LA loses Nashville or STL wins LA goes to an 8

Just spit balling

The tragic number is just the maximum number of points that a team can get in the remaining games minus the gap between them and the last playoff team.

Dallas has 10 games left, so that's 20 possible points, but they're already 15pts behind Nashville (currently the last wildcard team), so their tragic number is 5 (20-15=5). LA has 10 games left, so that's 20 possible points, but they're 8 points behind Nashville, so their tragic number is 12 (20-8=12).

As sycsam said, if LA loses their next game and both Nashville and St. Louis win theirs, then LA's tragic number will drop from 12 to 8 because they'll then have only 18 possible points remaining and the gap between them and Nashville will be 10 (18-10=8). If LA loses and either Nashville or St. Louis loses, then LA's tragic number will drop only to 10 (rather than 8), since they'll still be only 8pts out, but will have only 18 potential points left (18-8=10).

If we make it to the playoffs....Predators playoff chances are at 97.2% of going home early in the 1st round... sorry about being a negative Nancy

If we make it to the playoffs....Predators playoff chances are at 97.2% of going home early in the 1st round... sorry about being a negative Nancy
- pred_26

If they stay in the last wildcard spot, yeah. If they move up to the 3rd spot in the division or even just the first wildcard spot, their chances improve somewhat. Facing MIN or SJ, respectively, would still be a tough test, but not as tough as facing CHI. I'd want to move up to 3rd and take my chances with MIN, since they're not much more playoff experienced than NSH.