Anaheim Ducks (40-27-5) at Dallas Stars (38-25-9), 5:30 pm
Anaheim Calling and Defending Big D --(S)tarred and feathered.
Here's a four-team subset of this morning's western conference standings, with Anaheim having ten games to go. The column on the right is "regulation + OT wins", which will be the main tiebreaker at the end of the season -- Anaheim looks to be in good shape there.
| Team | GP | Record | Points | ROW |
| 6. Nashville Predators | 74 | 39-25-10 | 88 | 33 |
| 7. Chicago Blackhawks | 72 | 39-25-8 | 86 | 34 |
| 8. Anaheim Ducks | 72 | 40-27-5 | 85 | 36 |
| 9. Dallas Stars | 72 | 38-25-9 | 85 | 33 |
And wouldn't you know it -- the Ducks start out on a road trip that stops in Dallas tonight, Nashville tomorrow, and Chicago on Saturday -- seems pretty huge, eh?
I tried to think of a classic movie showdown -- The Matrix will do.
I should be around tonight -- stop on by for game comments. After the jump, some shot differential perspective!
Nothing too eye-opening today, but I decided to take a quick look at playoff teams since the lockout and how their shot differential looked over the regular season. 80 teams have made the postseason since the lockout; 39 of them outshot their opponents over a season by more than 100 shots.
The Ducks this season are quite the opposite of that -- through 72 games, the Ducks have 2,050 shots for vs. 2,336 shots against (-286). Projected to 82 games, that would mean that the Ducks will have been outshot by about 325 shots over the course of the regular season. That's pretty extreme -- only one team, last year's 8th-seeded Colorado Avalanche, qualified for the playoffs with a worse shot differential; they were outshot by 342 shots.
I've plotted out all 80 post-lockout playoff teams below, with a red dot representing where Anaheim projects to end this season -- if the Ducks do qualify this season, it looks like it could be a real Cinderella story.
Anyways, just something to think about as the Ducks run through their set of hero-come-lately goaltenders. Hell, even Jonas Hiller is coming along this road trip -- the drama never stops.
Prediction: The Ducks fail to yank Kari Lehtonen in the first six minutes of tonight's game, and as a result Anaheim plays an overall-more-competent game. Still, because it's the "3 points for everyone" western race, the game goes to overtime, where Saku Koivu becomes the hero.
Go Ducks.
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