Does Dallas have a prettier playoff picture than Avalanche?

Battle of California's Earl Sleek linked over to an interesting site today called PlayoffStatus.com, which determines percentages for playoff probability. According to the site: "All future un-played games are assumed won/lost with a probability based upon relative team strengths."

Digging around, it has some cool features like strength of regular season schedule and a postseason probability chart that nearly had us on the first flight to Vegas, cash in hand. But the one that got us was the probability chart playoff seeding for the Eastern and Western Conferences. Like the fact that there's a greater than 99 percent chance that the Atlanta Thrashers and New York Islanders will miss the playoffs, and a-less-than one percent chance the Boston Bruins will.

How about this one from the West: Percentage-wise, the Colorado Avalanche (10 percent) have better odds than the Dallas Stars (9 percent) in snagging the eighth seed; but according to PlayoffStatus.com, the Stars "control their own destiny" for that seed while the Avs do not.

Both teams are looking rosier than the Nashville Predators, however. According to the site, the Predators actually have a greater chance of missing the postseason (91 percent) than either the St. Louis Blues (89 percent) or the Los Angeles Kings (87 percent). Seriously?

Of course, numbers are just numbers. They don't take injuries or other unpredictable intangibles into account, like making a sex joke to the media and/or skipping out on the all-star game. But the site is something for the stat heads and math geeks to chew on. As for Islanders fans, we're sure they're much more interested in another set of odds and probabilities later this year.

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