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It’s past the three-quarter mark of the NHL schedule now, so it’s time to once again provide an update on my 2002/03 predictions, and compare them to how The Hockey News is doing so far this year. Through February 23, 75.3% of the NHL schedule had been completed. As it turns out, very little has changed since the mid-point update.

To evaluate the predictions, I will use the coefficients of correlation between the predicted conference rankings and the actual conference rankings (based on projected points to account for differences in games played), as at February 23. Really good predictions will have high positive correlation coefficients, say around 0.70 or higher. So without further ado, here are the results:

The Eastern Conference remains far easier to predict.  The Western Conference has been incredibly hard on prognosticators, with highly-rated San Jose being out of a playoff spot and Colorado only now starting to play like they were predicted to.  The correlation coefficients for the east are very high, for all three predictors.

I’ve retained my slim lead over the self-proclaimed “Bible of Hockey”, and we’re both outperforming last year’s actual results by a good margin.  But the season ain’t over yet.