I was looking at the standings last night and the goals for and against jumped out at me so I wanted to take a slightly deeper look into that. I realize this ignores all the #fancystats and simply looks at GF and GA but at the end of the day that's at least a decent indication of how a team is doing. I am simply looking at this year vs the past 3 years and based on what I'm seeing I think that we are seeing several teams that have over-achieved so far and they will come back to earth and we are seeing a Caps team that is struggling but if they can return to average will be in good shape, provided they don't wait to much longer to start looking better.

So here are current season and past 3 seasons of Goal Differential, teams ordered by standings as of this morning. I have excluded TB, Carolina and the Islanders because I think they will not come close to the playoffs.

	2011-2012 Goal Diff	2010-2011 Goal Diff	2009-2010 Goal Diff	2008-2009 Goal Diff	Average Goal Diff
#1 NY Rangers	30	35	4	-8	15.25
#2 Boston	56	51	6	78	47.75
#3 Florida	-2	-34	-36	3	-17.25
#4 Philadelphia	15	36	11	26	22
#5 Pittsburgh	25	39	20	25	27.25
#6 Toronto	-5	-33	-53	-43	-33.5
#7 New Jersey	-6	-35	31	35	6.25
#8 Winnipeg	-5	-46	-22	-23	-24
#9 Ottawa	-15	-58	-13	-20	-26.5
#10 Buffalo	-7	16	28	16	13.25
#11 Washington	-5	27	85	27	33.5
#12 Montreal	-9	7	-6	2	-1.5

First off Boston is playing out of their damn minds. They are outscoring opponents by an average of 1.7 Goals per game. I don't know how they can maintain that pace and would expect some regression. Last year finishing +58 they outscored opponents by .62 Goals per game.

Secondly only 4 teams in the East have a + goal differential, that really surprised me.

The teams that jump out at me as being most likely to regress and take themselves out of the picture are Florida, Toronto, Winnipeg and Ottawa I think Buffalo, NJ and Washington have the best chance of taking advantage of this.

Here are the the GF and GA per game. Again I don't know how Boston can maintain their current pace because it's unbelievable.

	2011-2012 GF/G	2011-2012 GA/G	2010-2011 GF/G	2010-2011 GA/G	2009-2010 GF/G	2009-2010 GA/G	2008-2009 GF/G	2008-2009 GA/G
#1 NY Rangers	3	2.12	2.84	2.41	2.71	2.66	2.56	2.66
#2 Boston	3.61	1.91	3	2.38	2.51	2.44	3.34	2.39
#3 Florida	2.68	2.73	2.38	2.79	2.54	2.98	2.85	2.82
#4 Philadelphia	3.4	2.97	3.16	2.72	2.88	2.74	3.22	2.91
#5 Pittsburgh	3.28	2.58	2.9	2.43	3.13	2.89	3.22	2.91
#6 Toronto	3.14	3.28	2.66	3.06	2.61	3.26	3.05	2.85
#7 New Jersey	2.77	2.94	2.12	2.55	2.71	2.33	2.98	2.55
#8 Winnipeg	2.78	2.92	2.72	3.28	2.85	3.12	3.13	3.41
#9 Ottawa	3.05	3.46	2.34	3.05	2.74	2.9	2.65	2.89
#10 Buffalo	2.74	2.94	2.99	2.79	2.87	2.52	3.05	2.85
#11 Washington	2.94	3.09	2.73	2.4	3.88	2.84	3.32	2.99
#12 Montreal	2.54	2.78	2.63	2.55	2.65	2.72	3.04	3.01

Again I realize that this doesn't take into account a lot of things. The GF/GA columns in the standings simply caught my eye and I wanted to put that out there for discussion.