ECL 8 Elite: Power Rankings - Week 4

Hello NHLGamers,

For this season of ECL Elite we are tweaking the recurring segment that looks to detail the ‘hottest’, ‘coldest’ and… ‘mildest’? teams in Elite over the past week. There will be more of an emphasis towards the quantitative approach, so expect more graphs and fewer walls of text. Each article in this series will be released on Mondays and will thusly be based on the days in between each power ranking iteration. In addition to this it should be noted that each ranking will invariably be in some way biased as it is, at the end of the day, a subjective list. Note: Each article will be based off of results starting from the Monday, all the way up to (& including) Friday. Ergo, any games played over the weekend will generally end up being a week 'late' so to speak. 

The logic behind the ranking is admittedly a sort of internal subjective ranking that weighs up results, opposition 'strength' as well as thoughts on the general play during some games. As such a ranking is not 100% quantifiable in nature there will be some bias that creeps in. One thing I would like to make abundantly clear however is that points are not the be all and end all within these rankings; for instance, just because 3 teams have the same record does not mean they won't be ranked wildly differently, as the context behind said results are of great importance and simply cannot be understated. 

Previous rankings:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

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1. FILADELPHIA (4-0-0) [+2]

2. Symphony (7-0-1) [+6]

3. Deadly Phantoms HC (3-1-0) [+3]

4. Rusty Blades (4-2-2) [-2]

5. Dynasty (3-3-0) [=]

6. Team Frosty (3-5-0) [-2]

7. Butterfly Effect (5-0-1) [+2]

8. Northern Stars (3-2-3) [+2]

9. AIK Hockey (2-1-1) [+5]

10. Almost Famous (5-3-0) [+3]

11. Bucketeers (3-3-0) [=]

12. Written in the Stars (0-0-0) [-11]

13. Unlucky Boys (1-3-0) [-6]

14. HC Wildcard (0-6-0) [+1]

15. Synergy Hockey (1-2-1) [+1]

16. Resurrection (0-4-0) [-4]

Standings Timeline

*The "playoff cut-off point", as well as the "relegation zone" lines are rough estimations of where the respective areas of Elite will fall once the regular season has been wrapped up. So, in other words, if a team is able to get over the green line, they 'should' stand a very good chance of making the playoffs, whilst if a team cannot make it past the red line, then there is a good chance that they will have to fight a relegation battle in order to assure their Elite spot for next season. 

Analysis

As we enter the home stretch of the season it appears as though the ‘blocks’ outlined last week have remained somewhat, albeit with some notable differences. For instance, Symphony have moved up into the upper bracket off the back of a very strong surge as of late, consequently joining the likes of Written in the Stars, Dynasty, FILADELPHIA & Rusty Blades.

Regarding the final playoff spots however we find some stark development. For instance, despite a week to forget from Team Frosty, they still remain within the group of 4 (Butterfly Effect, Deadly Phantoms HC, Almost Famous) who harbour the best shot at clinching a berth. Time is running out for Frosty however, as they are sitting on the cusp of 8^th/9^th thanks to a great performance over this past week by DPH who are now nipping away at their heels. If any of these teams fail to find traction and cannot gain any more points from the remaining games on their schedules then they may be in for a rude awakening as, whilst the group has thinned slightly with Synergy effectively being out of contention now, the pace of the teams trailing them cannot be written off. AIK Hockey, Northern Stars, Unlucky Boys, Resurrection & even Bucketeers all have had a noticeable uptick as of late and could conceivably put on a late push, of course some are more likely than others (e.g. AIK still have a couple games in hand compared to most), nevertheless, all of this just makes for perhaps a more interesting end to the season than years past.

Projection

The section looks to, well, project where a team will finish based off of all the games they have played thus far. 

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And with that, we can now conclude the fourth edition of ECL 8 Elite's power rankings. Hopefully next week we will see the stratification continue so that we can pick out any further trends with ease. 

ECL Elite Writer 

@MartindalexC