Optimism at the All-Star Break

Most Blues fans have written off their chances for making the playoffs this season, but I offer to you quantitative hope. For starters, the Blues have won 7 of the last 8 possible points. Common knowledge, but you only have to dig a bit to find more hope. Specifically, one of my favorite stats: goal differential. Check out the stats for the Western conference sorted according to goal differential.

	Team		W	L	OTL	PTS	GF	GA	Diff	PP%	PK%
1	San Jose	45	34	6	5	73	160	108	52	23.6	85.1
2	Detroit	46	31	9	6	68	173	133	40	27.6	79.6
4	Chicago	45	25	12	8	58	152	114	38	21.1	82.8
	Minnesota	46	23	20	3	49	117	107	10	21.7	87.4
3	Calgary	46	28	14	4	60	146	138	8	19.2	85.7
7	Vancouver	48	22	19	7	51	137	137	0	16.9	80.7
8	Anaheim	49	23	21	5	51	136	137	-1	21.8	81
	Columbus	47	22	20	5	49	129	133	-4	11.4	80.2
6	Edmonton	46	24	19	3	51	132	138	-6	18	76.3
	Colorado	47	23	23	1	47	131	140	-9	17.1	77.2
5	Phoenix	48	24	19	5	53	126	139	-13	13.9	80.5
	Los Angeles	46	19	20	7	45	117	131	-14	18.2	82.1
	St. Louis	46	19	23	4	42	133	149	-16	22.3	79.9
	Dallas	45	20	18	7	47	130	152	-22	15.3	77.7
	Nashville	46	20	23	3	43	111	134	-23	13.7	84

Notice first that the Blues are not in last place in this metric, Dallas and Nashville are worse. What's more encouraging is Phoenix's stat (-13). Only 3 goals better than the Blues yet they are the fifth best team in the conference? Meanwhile, Edmonton (-6) is playoff bound while Minnesota (+10) is not?

What this really means is that Phoenix and Edmonton are better at winning close games while losing big. The way I see it, this does not make them good teams. If they are so good they would score more goals than they allow over a not insignificant 45 game period. They can just as easily lose close games later in the year and fall down. If the Blues continue to improve and Phoenix and Edmonton's luck runs out, there could be space for the Blues at the end of the season. It's too early to give up on them.