I looked over the scoring stats and was somewhat surprised to see that despite having the best start of his career, Jarome Iginla is only 25th in league scoring. Then I took a closer look and noticed that 20 of the top 25 point getters are from the Eastern conference. Twenty! The first WC representative to appear in the list is Patrick Marleau at spot #11 with 27 points. Below him is Teemu Selanne at #12, Joe Thornton at #16, Chris Proner at #22 and then Iggy at #25. The rest are EC players.
On the flip side, team GA stats are primarily dominated by WC teams. The top GA/G clubs are Dallas, Detroit, Calgary, Anaheim and San Jose in that order. New Jersey and Montreal are the only two EC teams to crack the top ten in terms of GA/G. A number of strong EC conference teams share the latter half of the GA/G list (BUF, TOR, ATL, NYR, CAR) with WC bottom-feeders (CHI, CBJ, LAK, STL and PHX).
The goaltending stats are similarly skewed. Only 3 EC goalies crack the top ten in terms of GAA average and two of them (Huet and Emery) have played less than 14 games. WC represntatives include Hasek, Kipper, Giguere, Turco and Roloson...and they've all played the bulk of the minutes for their teams thus far.
So it seems one side of the league has opted for an all-out attack strategy while the other has decided to stick with a stout defensive one. There has always been a slight difference between conferences in the past, but I don't remember it ever being this marked before. I mean, Iginla is among the top 5 WC scorers but doesn't even crack the leagues top 20. It makes one wonder just how many points he would accrue on a team like Buffalo or Carolina...
Im at loss to describe precisely why the two conferences differ so much. Is the WC's asshole tightening in response to the Flames success over the two seasons? It certainly seems like clubs such as Detroit, Dallas and Vancouver have moved closer to a Calgary brand of hockey this season. All three are apparently sold on the "win through strong goaltending and team defense" mindset. Build from the back-end out. Even the Oilers are exceling at the "d" part of the game over the "o" thus far.
So is there simply an imbalance in the league? More scorers in the east, better goalies in the west? Or is it coaching and strategy that is causing this polarization? Hard to say. I think I'll leave it to more astute observers like Tyler Dellow and Tom Benjamin to sort it out though.
