As we see teams clinching left and right, the shortened season is showing it's effects to teams that were prepared for this sprint and those who stumbled out of the gates and it cost them. The Islanders and Leafs show the teams who knew the role the short season played and stepped up to take a playoff spot, while the Devils and Predators saw their success from previous seasons fall by the wayside.
While the 48-game season has proven exciting, with some wondering if there should be a short season every few years (or every year); you have to wonder if the panic button of a 48-game season was hit too early for most teams. With little time to adjust or let a slump adjust your team's personality, the coaching staff probably tried to do too much, too soon, with guys who may have not adjusted back to the game if they hadn't been playing elsewhere during the Lockout.
But, is there a way to accurately prorate were a team would be if there were 36 games added to the schedule?? It's a very out there ideal because to adjust the schedule in that extreme and give them more time, because most of the teams would have done things differently in those extra games in knowing that they were going to have time to make up the ground they lose. Conversely, you could have surprising teams who probably would have dropped off-- like if the Leafs and Islanders hadn't clinched, could they have kept up with the pace of other teams who would get those other games to improve??
There are many out there with their "fancy stats" who could probably break it down a little more with a little more time, trying to make people believe that hockey is in the exact realm of baseball where all the outside influence actually add to a players worth-- but I don't have that kind of time, patience, or care for such a thing.
My basis for things is that when you look towards a middle of the season, which where we'd be at in a normal NHL season, you always have a team who was surprising in the first half get screwed over by the second half and buying into their own hype too much. Not only that, but it would have drastically changed the trade market and what teams would have needed or wanted for their certain situations. To that, you wonder if Marian Gaborik would have accepted a deal to the Blue Jackets if they were in a free fall rather than a rally in the second half of their season.
Part of me would love to be able to get into trends of what could have happened in the season should it be a full 82-game slate, but the circumstances don't allow for that. The ebbs and flows of certain teams and the travel schedule, injury happenings, and general disarray that a longer season would create almost make it impossible to properly predict how some of the teams on the bubble would react to their position and how their mentality would work. But, it's always fun to banter back and forth as we look back at this season.
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