One of the best moments in any regular season is the day your favorite team clinches a playoff berth. In baseball, they have a term called “Magic Number,” which shows exactly how many more wins a team needs to reach the postseason. Hockey works a bit differently as the playoff teams are determined by points instead of record. It gets even more complicated when you consider that not every loss is equal (OT losses are better than regulation losses). But we were never going to let that stop us.
That’s why here at SinBin.vegas we created the term “Points to Elimination.” The object of the stat is to show exactly how close the Golden Knights are to clinching a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The idea is to illustrate when a team cannot mathematically catch the Golden Knights. When that happens with each team, it means the Golden Knights are one step closer to reaching the playoffs, winning the division, or clinching the home-ice advantage through the postseason.
Here’s what it takes to reach each goal.
- To clinch the playoffs
- Vegas must have eliminated either five teams in the Pacific Division OR eight teams in the Western Conference.
- To clinch the Pacific Division
- Vegas must have eliminated all seven Pacific Division teams.
- To clinch the Western Conference
- Vegas must have eliminated all 15 Western Conference teams.
So, how does it work?
The goal is to get that number to 0, thus eliminating that team from finishing the season with more points than the Golden Knights.
There are two ways to take points off the number. First, the Golden Knights earn points. If they win, you subtract two from the number. If they lose in OT, you subtract one. The other way is for the team in question to fail to earn points. If they lose, you subtract two. If they lose in OT, one. If the Golden Knights lose and the team in question wins, then the number remains the same.
Reminder: This is only eliminating the team from finishing with more points than the Golden Knights. This does NOT mean that a team is eliminated from the playoffs.
Here’s the formula to follow.
(Team X games remaining x 2) + Team X Points – Golden Knights Points + 1
*The reason we add the extra one point at the end is to offset a tie. Once the Golden Knights have clinched the tiebreaker against a team, that extra point is removed.*
All teams begin at 165 (82*2 + 0 – 0 + 1).
Updated Points to Elimination can be found on SinBin.vegas at all times during the regular season. On desktop it is located on the sidebar as well as at the very bottom of the site. On mobile it is found at the bottom of the site.
