Breaking Down Point Pacing

[text_output]Hey everyone, its ya boy Rex again coming at you hard and fast with another over-reaction reaction article. We’re the best team in hockey, look at our L10, look at this sweet streak, were gonna win the cup. Here is the picture for all y’all who are on this hype train. Now, for me all the talk about “the rangers need a 104 point pace to make the playoffs” this sort of confused me, so I did the nerdiest possible thing and made a bunch of graphs in a giant spreadsheet.

Generally 95 points is a safe bet to make the playoffs and 100 points is basically a guaranteed spot barring some insane season for a bunch of teams. To put that into perspective a 95 point pace is equivalent to getting 1.159 points per game while a 100 point pace requires 1.220 points per game. In either case it is very obvious that a team has to consistently do more than tie each night. Here is where we can make comparisons to how the rangers have been doing up to this point as of game 16. I know the graph below is a massive amount of lines but it’s easier to visualize and then explain.[/text_output][image type=”thumbnail” float=”none” src=”905″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””][text_output]So first off the two small dotted lines represent a 95 and 100 point season starting from game one. The hypothetical team gets exactly the rate I mentioned above and achieves the point total by seasons end. The other lines are where it gets more interesting by far.

The 4 Rangers lines (my favorite is the top one) start from game 16 to represent that those games have already happened. This cut off is shown by the large black vertical line. The bottom maroon dashed line is a point pace if the Rangers keep up their season average play of 1 point per game. As of game 16 the team has 16 points so it is pretty easy to do 1 times 82 and see that we would end with 82 points. Now any of us can look at the last 10 games (L10) and hope that that is the team we get for the rest of the season. In that hypothetical world the team is getting 1.4 points per game (damn son that’s like a billion) and taking that rate from game 16 the Rangers end the season with 108 points. That is a very good season ending point total and would mean an incredibly successful regular season for any team. Last year only four teams finished 108 or more points so I don’t think anyone would be talking about a tank. If a team started the season at this pace they would end up with 115 points which has only been surpassed twice in the last 3 seasons. How bout them president’s trophies Caps fans? Where’s the champion of the postseason trophy to match?

Now more realistically the team will probably fall between these two rates. So let us touch back on the 95 and 100 point totals we discussed earlier. To achieve 95 points from game 16 the team must gain 1.197 points per game and must get 1.273 ppg to achieve 100 points total. These can be seen on the graph by the green and blue solid lines respectively. These are not really that impossible by this point in the season, visually they are close to the 95 and 100 point pace lines.

So FINALLY after all this I can answer my question of what equivalent point pace do the rangers need to make the playoffs. By taking the “from game 16” rates and multiplying by 82 games we can see how many points a team would get over a full season. Drumroll please.

1.197 x 82 = 98.15 points

1.272 x 82 = 104.36 points

So that isn’t all that bad. If you recall a few weeks ago “The Rangers need a 104 point pace to make the playoffs this season”. This team has rallied and brought that down to a 98 point pace or 104 point pace if they really want to. As of the day I am writing this (11/8/17) the Rangers are one point out of a wildcard spot and 4 points out of the division lead. So to me these numbers are totally doable especially now that there seems to be chemistry on the ice and lines seem to be rolling well. The team still has a lot of issues that need to be solved, but as of this moment the playoffs is not out of the question.

Thanks for listening to me math at you, and hopefully this calms some people down.

Coming at you live from the twin cities, ya boy Rex.[/text_output]