NHL power rankings
All 32 teams, sorted by a rating that mixes their record with how much they outscore people. I don’t move anyone up or down by hand. The formula is at the bottom of the page if you want to check my math.
How this is calculated The formula, and why
What goes in. Each team’s record plus goals for and against, straight from the standings. That’s it. No polls, no betting odds, no opinions (mine included).
Two parts. Results is the share of possible standings points a team has picked up. Margin uses goals for and against to estimate how often a team “should” be winning (the Pythagorean expectation thing, if you’ve seen it in baseball).
Why margin matters. Records lie a bit early on. One-goal games, OT and shootouts can go either way on a bounce. A team that keeps winning by three is probably better than one scraping by in shootouts, so margin gets almost half the weight.
When it updates. Once a week, after Sunday’s games (Eastern time). The up/down arrows compare with last week’s list. If two teams tie on rating, goal differential per game breaks it. The one-line blurb under each team is generated from its numbers, I don’t write those.
Rating = 100 × (0.55 × Results + 0.45 × Margin)
- Results
- points ÷ (2 × games played)
- Margin
- GF2.05 ÷ (GF2.05 + GA2.05)
Scale is 0–100. A team with no games yet sits at 50.