Who takes 3rd in the West?

[Dan Russell]

Just for fun, I've crunched all the possibilities of the remaining games that will determine who gets the third and final berth left in the west.

Edm owns the tiebreaker against Ssk, having already won two of the three head-to-head games, with the third one left to play. There are five games left on the schedule that will determine whether Ssk (currently 7-8-14pts) or Edm (5-10-10pts) gets the last berth. They are:

(1) Mtl@Ssk, Fri Oct 13
(2) Tor@Edm, Sat Oct 14
(3) Ssk@Tor, Fri Oct 20
(4) Edm@Mtl, Sat Oct 21
(5) Ssk@Edm, Fri Oct 27

There are 2^5 = 32 possible outcomes -- neglecting ties, since they are statistically unlikely and make things too complicated to justify their extra consideration; there would then be 3^5 = 243 possible outcomes -- and all other things being equal, Edm's chances are 5 in 32 to make the playoffs, while Ssk's are 27 in 32.

Listed below are all the possible outcomes of the above five games as strings of five characters. A letter 'E' or 'e' for the nth character means that the outcome of the nth game listed above went in Edm's favour, similarly for 'S' or 's' -- with a capital indicating that the team in question actually played in (and won) that game. I've also included, for each scenario, the final point totals of each team. The outcomes which give Ssk the playoff berth are highlighted in green; those for Edm are in yellow.

eEeEE: Ssk 14, Edm 16
eEeES: 16, 14
eEesE: 14, 14
eEesS: 16, 12
eESEE: 16, 16
eESES: 18, 14
eESsE: 16, 14
eESsS: 18, 12
eseEE: 14, 14
eseES: 16, 12
esesE: 14, 12
esesS: 16, 10
esSEE: 16, 14
esSES: 18, 12
esSsE: 16, 12
esSsS: 18, 10
SEeEE: 16, 16
SEeES: 18, 14
SEesE: 16, 14
SEesS: 18, 12
SESEE: 18, 16
SESES: 20, 14
SESsE: 18, 14
SESsS: 20, 12
SseEE: 16, 14
SseES: 18, 12
SsesE: 16, 12
SsesS: 18, 10
SsSEE: 18, 14
SsSES: 20, 12
SsSsE: 18, 12
SsSsS: 20, 10

It's clear from this tabulation that if Ssk wins on Friday (denoted by an initial S character), then EVERYTHING will have to go Edm's way for them to make the playoffs, which makes sense since they'll trail by 6pts with three games left to play. Should Ssk lose that game, then Edm's chances increase to 25% (it's 15-5/8% right now). At any rate, and consistent with what Rammer just said, Edmonton has only one mulligan left, which they can only cash in before facing Ssk in the final game (i.e., those groups of yellow strings only have one s or S in each of them and it never appears at the end).
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SJ-Roc takes his fish juice with an extra helping of cowbell.

That must have taken some quite of time.