33 games left and the Flames need to win 20 of them to make the playoffs.

In looking at the year to this point is seems that Calgary needs to get more wins on the road if they hope to make the playoffs. The Flames have won 10 road games in 28 tries a success rate of .357. At home, the Flames are much better winning 62% of their games 13 of 21 .The total wins of 23 in 49 games is only a 40.8% success rate. Winning 20 of the last 33 is 60.6% Can it be done ?

20 wins would bring Calgary to 43 - two more than last year and would ensure that they have more wins than non wins, which really is the essential factor. I believe you can ignore the loser point for the most part, every time you get one that means somebody else got two points and it is very likely you fell further behind any way. . Usually about 75% of the league falls in a fairly narrow range of loser points - from 9-13 or so. Calgary and most of its competitors all look to be on pace for that range except for LA ( at 10 already) and Colorado (only 2). If you are trying to make the playoffs with more than 10 loser points then it is more likely the 8th place threshold will be higher than 94 anyways - you still need at least 42 wins.

Keeping the same pace up would result in 12 more home victories in the final 20 at home. The current road pace might get only 5 victories out of the last 13 games, leaving the Flames three wins short. The saving grace is that some of those road games are against some teams that are less than stellar at home. 2 each against Anaheim ( 13 wins in 26 games) and Phoenix ( 9 wins in 23) and one in Edmonton (12 in 23).

I looked at the current records of all the Flames opponents home vs road to get a predictor for victory. I took the teams percentage of games won and subtracted that number from 1.5, the resulting number I then multiplied by the Flames record in that location. So for example tonight vs San Jose, the Sharks have 11 wins in 21 road games - .523, take that number off the 1.5 factor and you get 0.977 factor to multiply by the Flames home winning percentage of .620 and you get a chance of victory of .605 for the Flames. If a team at 50% win rate the factor ends up being exactly 1 and gets multiplied by the Flames raw record. When a team is below .500 that increases the chance of the Flames outperforming their number to date. Example is Phoenix with only 9 wins in 23 tries at home is 0.391, giving the Flames a 1.109 chance of outperforming their 0.357 win success ratio on the road.

The surest win is the home date against Columbus at 80.1 % , and the least likely is the road game in San Jose at 32.1 %. The toughest home game against a Philadelphia squad that sports a road .653 winning percentage (52.5%)is still a better bet at this point than the easiest road game in Phoenix (39.5%), owing to the large discrepancy to date between the Flames home and road records. The average chance of victory for all games 53.3 % which translates in to 17.6 wins, still 2 wins short. The Flames might make the playoffs with only 41 wins - but they would need at least 12 and maybe 14 OT losses. 17 wins and 8 reg losses and 8 OT losses? Whew.

Here's the chart sorted by likelihood of victory.

Looking at that list there are 14 home games against teams that win less than 50% of the time on the road. You'd better win at least 12 of those. The six tougher home games include 2 each against Vancouver and San Jose plus games against Detroit and Philadelphia. Would 3 wins out of 6 be possible ? On the road there are 5 games that are against teams who are winning 50% or less at home - count that for 3 wins and again you are at the 18 win total. The remaining 8 road games against teams who win more than they don't at home, if you can get 2 of those - Edmonton and one of the Dallas games you can get to 20., but you really have to make hay at home.

My feeling after looking at this says the Flames will get 17 or 18 of their final 33 and may end up with 5 more loser points. 41-30-11 for 93 points and 9th place.