it really does make a difference when you got divsions like the North west and north east. every single team in thous divisions is very good. and are good enough to win other divsions. i am not saying that detroit is a bad team, what i am saying is that the standings are decptive, and teams are not as good as one things just because they are seated in a certain position. look at edmonton. i my opinion edomonton was the best team in the league at the end of the season but they wernt in the playoffs, why cus they dug themselfves a hole at the begining of the year, and were not able to get out because their divsion was so tough.same goes for bufflo, did you know that ever team in the norht east division could have been in the playoffs and every teams except for one could have made the playoffs from the northwest divsion. so looking at the north east divsion, teams there played at least 24 games against teasm that either were in the playoffs or missed the playoffs by one or two points. then you look at the south east divion. tampa was th only team that made th playoffs there, the rest were not even close. that means that tampa played at least 24 games against teams that didnt make the playoffs. that is 24 easy games in for one team, and 24 very hard games for another team. since tampa was first lets say they won all of there games that is 48 pts. and for the otehr teams lets say there were even that is 24 pts, as difference of 24 pts. go look at the standings and youll see how much 24 pts matters. in the vancouver detoirt case i think it would probably would have made around 7-8 pts difference. 7-8 pts would have tied vancouver with detroit with the league lead. now that stat about the 7-8 pts doesnt really matter, but what i am trying to do it to put it in prospective for you.