Pacific Division Race, Take 2

While the rest of the Pacific Division teams were into their third or fourth days into a bye week and the NHL All-Star break, the Los Angeles Kings were on the road Tuesday piling up a three-goal lead by scoring four unanswered goals against Metropolitan Division leader Carolina. But the Hurricanes rallied for three goals during the final 20 minutes of regulation to push the game into overtime.
Carolina star center Sebastian Aho, wisely drafted in the second round (35th overall) by Kraken GM Ron Francis in 2015 when in the same job with the Hurricanes, scored the OT winner with less than a minute remaining.
It all adds up to 63 points in 53 games for the Kings as they go on a break until a Feb. 11 home game against Pittsburgh. That's good for second place behind your favorite Seattle good guys, who have amassed 63 standings points in 49 games, which means Seattle has four games in hand to put some distance between them and the rest of the Pacific Division.

Three of those games in hand will be played before LA is back in action, when the Kraken's five-game road trip begins next Tuesday against the New York Islanders, followed by back-to-back games against the New Jersey Devils next Thursday and the New York Rangers on Feb. 10.
The Pacific Division is the tightest from places one through five with just six standings points separating the Kraken and Kings from Vegas (62 points), Edmonton (60), and Calgary (57). The Central Division in the Western Conference is the next closest at 12 points separating first from fifth. It's important to keep in mind the Kraken have games in hand against Vegas (two) and Edmonton/Calgary (one game) along with the quartet of opportunities in hand on the Kings.
The remaining two-and-a-half months of the NHL regular season are both a grind and a sprint. As Kraken fans ponder the team's first potential push to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, widely considered the most entertaining and dramatic of all professional sports postseasons, here are facts to keep in mind.

Projected Standings Points

Dom Luszczyszyn is a must-read hockey analytics reporter for The Athletic. He created and continues to update his predictive model for how NHL teams will finish in the standings and, similarly, how players project in terms of producing goals and assist along with a "game score" stat that widens a player's impact on his team's wins. For this account, Seattle fans will be happy to know Luszczyszyn's model puts the Kraken at earning 104 or 105 (104.6 to be exact) when the regular season concludes on April 13.
That puts Seattle 7th best overall across the 32-team league and first among Pacific Division teams. Five Eastern Conference teams - Boston, Carolina, Toronto, Tampa Bay, and Toronto - top the projected points model. No. 6 is Dallas, which leads the Central Division with 66 points in 51 games. Luszczyszyn's projections for the rest of the Pacific leaders: Edmonton 102.5, Calgary 99.3, Vegas 97.2, and Los Angeles 96.6.

Strength of Remaining Schedule

"Strength of schedule" is a common topic during NCAA basketball's March Madness, used by postseason tournament committees as an important factor to seed teams in the men's and women's brackets. In the NHL, there are websites tracking "SoS" to give fans (and hockey front offices) a quick look at what sort of schedule looms ahead for both their squads and those of contenders in the divisional and wild-card races.
Quick refresher: The top three teams in the Pacific automatically qualify for the eight-team Western Conference playoff bracket while the final two teams come from the best two records among fourth- and fifth-place teams in the Central and Pacific divisions).
There are several websites that track NHL strength of schedule. Powerrankingsguru.com aggregates such strength estimates across four sites, including Money Puck and numberFire. The strength-of-remaining-schedule numbers for Pacific Division contenders stack up as closely as the current standings points except for one outlier.
Per Powerrankingsguru.com, the Kraken are 32nd in strength of remaining schedule or what is deemed the easiest schedule in the league (of course, that is clearly a numbers projection at this point in time, teams do get hot, injuries happen, etc.). In contrast, Vegas has the 9th most difficult schedule for the rest of the regular season. VGK will have to take on those opponents without captain and scoring catalyst Mark Stone.
The right wing underwent back surgery this week and will be out of the lineup indefinitely. Stone has missed the last eight games with the back issue and Vegas has won just one game and averaged only two goals per game.
On the other hand, Calgary ranks 29th in strength of schedule, while Edmonton sits at No. 28 and the Kings at No. 26. That translates to the easiest schedule for Seattle, fourth easiest for the Flames, fifth easiest for the Oilers, and seventh easiest for LA.

Kraken Schedule Examined

No matter the strength-of-schedule ranking, the Kraken still have top teams left on the slate: They play the aforementioned New Jersey Devils (No. 5 overall in the NHL schedule) next week, then host Boston (No. 1) and Toronto (No. 1) later this month. In March, the Kraken will face Dallas (No. 6 overall and tops in the Western Conference ) three times, including two home games in three days at Climate Pledge Arena, then a road contest eight days later in Dallas.
April is when the schedule softens, at least by data analysis. Seattle plays Arizona three times in eight days, including two home games. Chicago (No. 31) is on the home schedule too.
As for divisional matchups, the Kraken are done playing Calgary. One game remains with Edmonton (March), one more with Los Angeles (April 1), and two games versus Vegas (away on the 81st or penultimate game of the regular season, then home two nights later to finish the regular season on April 13.
There is only one Pacific Division game this month (San Jose on the road), then four in March, including San Jose at home and Anaheim twice at home. In April, there are four more Pacific games, the aforementioned showdowns with LA and Vegas, plus a late-season road game in Vancouver. Both the Vegas and Vancouver away contests come on the second night of back-to-back games. Lots of hockey and intrigue beckons.