RITER RADIO: 2012

I've believed for awhile that the official NHL standings don't accurately represent the most likely final standings. This is primarily due to the NHL ignoring the number of games played by each team. In years past, I've ranked teams based on their maximum potential points but have modified it this year.

The spreadsheet that I'm using incorporates a variety of extra info that comes into play once tiebreakers are an issue but, with 16 or so games left for each team, it's not yet time to get into that sort of minutiae.

Teams are ranked based on "pace." The formula for pace is simple: points earned divided by games played multiplied by 82. This is, I believe, the truest gauge of where everyone stands after each win, loss, or overtime loss. For now, we're ignoring the important tiebreaker-related stat "non shootout wins." We'll get to that later.

Here's where we stand through the games of 3/10/12.