Magic numbers are usually associated with baseball, and for good reason. A win is a win, and whoever has the most in each division at the end of the season goes to the playoffs (along with the wild card, of course). Same for football, but with two wild cards. Easy. Basketball is a little tougher, with what amounts to five wild cards in each conference, but an NBA game can only be either won or lost. The NHL, of course, adds a new wrinkle, with a point system set up in place to support the game's current practice of three possible outcomes. So how do we get the magic number to play nice with a point system and five wild cards? And should it be bothered with this early in the season?

Shorts answers: Math, and probably not. But let's go for it anyway!

As you all should know, in baseball a magic number is the total number of wins for team A and losses for team B, in any combination, for A to be guaranteed a better record than B. It's almost always used for playoff races, but it can be used to compare any two teams. In win/loss games, it is defined as the number of games in a season, minus the number of A's wins, minus B's losses, plus one. Here's the formula (see the Wikipedia article for more):

Magic Number(a) = Games - Wins(a) - Losses(b) - 1

Now, hockey uses points. Wins and losses alone won't tell the whole story, so we look at the point column and tweak the formula a bit. The number of games in a season isn't helpful, it's the number of points in a season that we want, so we multiply 82 by two. Team A's wins needs to be doubled as well, and we need to add in their overtime losses. Same goes for team B: double their losses, add their overtime losses. The one can be left alone. So, after a bit of simplification, we come up with this:

Magic Number(a) = 165 - Points(a) + Points(b) - (2 * Games Played(b))

It's far simpler than it looks, I swear. So how are the Sharks looking?

Still 15 wins, 15 Red Wings 60-minute losses, and an overtime loss on either side for the Sharks to get the number one seed. Heck, they're still 9 wins and 9 Blues losses from even guaranteeing that they won't finish last in the conference. So in conclusion, it's not too helpful at this point, but I figured I'd see how things looked.

I'll put it on the back burner for now, maybe revisit it at the end of next month?

P.S. A look at Boston's numbers in the East.