Playoff Predictor Now Live for 2014

Travis Morin at the Stars' bench (Credit: Christina Shapiro/Texas Stars)

You may have noticed a new link at the top of the page this weekend. Once again, I've taken a run at the playoff picture using some maths.

The methods used to calculate these data were originally presented in a Spring 2010 blog post linked from the page, which does a pretty decent job of explaining how I did this. There is more information, a key for all the abbreviations, and an FAQ below the table.

Check out the predictor here.

There aren't any super huge surprises in the table. Some of the more interesting items include:

• The Comets, Bulldogs and Barons are unlikely to catch the Stars or Heat for first or second place.
• The Rampage have been on a winning streak recently but still need a .659 points percentage to make the playoffs. That's at least a record of 14-7-1-0 in their final 22 games. Four of those are against the Stars.
• The top five clubs in the West are very tight, all predicted to finish within two points of each other.
• In the East, things are more spread out. The predicted gulf between one and two is twice as large as the gap between one and five in the West.
  
• There are nine teams slotted to potentially make the playoffs in the East. There is a massive gap between ninth place Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and tenth place Bridgeport: a predicted twelve points.