As recently as last month, Metropolitan division teams had won only about 35% of their games against the West and 45% of their games against the Atlantic. But they have been on a good run lately, and as of today, have won 45% of their games against the West and 51% of their games against the Atlantic. Suddenly, the Metropolitan division has a similar record (in fact, marginally better as of this post's writing) as the Atlantic division.
In fact, the whole "West is so much stronger than East" thing is less and less true. Again, as of early December (or was it late November?), Eastern teams had won only about 36% of their games against the West. Now, it's 45%, meaning the in the past few weeks, the East has actually had a winning record against the West.
I wonder when the hockey commentators will catch on to the new reality. (Or maybe they don't need to, if the Metropolitan/East goes back to sucking in the coming weeks.) All this is masked by the fact that the West still has 9 of the top 13 teams in the league (and the Metropolitan has only one), but if the current trend continues, that'll change.
As a Habs fan, I have to point out that the Leafs have just two regulation wins in their past 25 games - yes, 2/25. I blame this for the Metropolitan catching up to the Atlantic. On second thought, nah, just keep doing what you've doing, Leafs - I like you this way.
