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Very early on in New Jersey's turnaround, I was on record saying that Jacques Lemaire's Devils would make things very, very interesting, but that they would ultimately fall just short—that Lou Lamoriello's moves to bring back Lemaire and to ship out problematic captain Jamie Langenbrunner had come too little, too late. You can check out my earlier analysis here, here, here, and here, as well as in Hockey Prospectus 2010-11. But I have to say…I'm having second thoughts.
Yes, New Jersey's chances still show up at less than 5% for most sites calculating the odds, but as I've said before, that's mixing the pathetic MacLean-and-Langenbrunner Devils of the first half of the season with a team akin to the early season Devils of 2009-10 (they were a .757 team before Christmas 2009). It's as severely underestimating New Jersey's chances as the bandwagon jumpers have been overestimating their chances.
So what are New Jersey's true chances of making the postseason? Already significantly better than the Hurricanes, and starting to get within a whisker of the rival Rangers, though that might not be apparent at a glance. First, let's take a look at the standings at the end of play last night, to get a conventional view:
Eastern Conference standings (current)
Seed Team GP W Pts P%
1 Philadelphia 69 43 93 .674
2 Washington 71 41 92 .648
3 Pittsburgh 71 41 90 .634
4 Boston 69 39 87 .630
5 Tampa Bay 70 39 87 .621
6 Montreal 70 38 83 .593
7 NY Rangers 71 37 78 .549
8 Buffalo 70 34 76 .543
9 Carolina 70 32 74 .529
10 New Jersey 69 33 70 .507
11 Toronto 70 30 70 .500
12 Atlanta 70 29 70 .500
13 Florida 70 28 65 .464
14 NY Islanders 71 27 65 .458
15 Ottawa 70 25 59 .421
We can do much better than that, though. Taking into account each team's remaining number of games as well as their level of play over the last few months and their upcoming opposition's expected level of play, here's how I currently see things finishing up:
Eastern Conference standings (projected)
Rank Team Pts GR Team P% Opponent P% Projected Pts
1 Philadelphia 93 13 0.647 0.548 110.2
2 Washington 92 11 0.694 0.561 107.3
3 Boston 87 13 0.632 0.569 103.2
4 Pittsburgh 90 11 0.583 0.576 102.5
5 Tampa Bay 87 12 0.600 0.533 102.1
6 Montreal 83 12 0.586 0.575 96.7
7 Buffalo 76 12 0.629 0.570 90.9
8 NY Rangers 78 11 0.514 0.564 89.2
9 New Jersey 70 13 0.735 0.580 88.5
10 Carolina 74 12 0.543 0.565 86.9
11 Toronto 70 12 0.571 0.564 83.6
12 Atlanta 70 12 0.386 0.583 78.9
13 NY Islanders 65 11 0.542 0.570 76.7
14 Florida 65 12 0.443 0.582 75.2
15 Ottawa 59 12 0.386 0.579 68.0
Pts: Current points
GR: Games Remaining
Team P%: Recent level of play, point percentage
Opponent P%: Opponents' recent level of play, point percentage
Projected points: Points projection at the end of the season
What do we get? A race that's almost too close to call between the rival Rangers and Devils, possibly even coming down to those crazy new tiebreakers the NHL instituted regarding shootout wins and non-shootout wins. The real question may come down to Tortorella's Blue Shirts, as opposed to Lemaire's Devils. I'd be willing to bet that New Jersey can keep up a .700-plus clip going for the next dozen games, but can the Rangers improve their faltering play since Christmas? New York has been the coolest of the playoff hopefuls in the East, even moreso than Carolina.
Is there a chance that Buffalo might be the team that ends up on the outside of the postseason picture, or that Carolina finds a way in? Sure, but the smart money is on New York and New Jersey fighting for that last spot. And, uh-oh. Take a look at the last game on the Rangers' schedule…
Remaining schedules
Buffalo Sabres: ATL, NSH*, @MTL, FLA, NJD*, @TOR, NYR*, @WSH, @CAR*, TBL, PHI, @CBJ*
New York Rangers: MTL, @PIT, FLA, OTT, @BOS, @BUF, @NYI*, @PHI, BOS*, ATL, NJD
New Jersey Devils: @OTT, WSH*, @CBJ, @BOS, @PIT, @BUF*, NYI, PHI, MTL*, @PIT, TOR*, @NYR, BOS*
Carolina Hurricanes: TOR*, NYI, OTT, @TBL, TBL*, @WSH, MTL*, @NYI, BUF*, DET, @ATL, TBL*
*Second game of a back-to-back
Timo Seppa is an author of Hockey Prospectus.
You can contact Timo by clicking here or click here to see Timo's other articles.
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Driving To The Net (03/16)
3 comments have been left for this article. 
Through March 17, here are my updated projections:
Philadelphia 109.4, Washington 105.7, Boston 102.9, Pittsburgh 102.5, Tampa Bay 102.0, Montreal 98.0, Buffalo 90.9, NY Rangers 89.2, New Jersey 86.2, Carolina 85.5, Toronto 83.1, Atlanta 80.6, Florida 76.8, NY Islanders 76.8, Ottawa 69.8.
As New Jersey's expected to be playing better than New York and Carolina, each actual point lost hurts more than a point in the projections. They lost two points against last place Ottawa last night, and therefore more than two points on the projection (2.3). In addition, their Opponent P% is up to .593, now that "easy" Ottawa is off the schedule.