The Flyers numbers, I believe, count both entire seasons of “missing” Mike Rathje and Derian Hatcher—two pylons at this point in their careers even if they were healthy.

Sure the Caps have been really banged up and DiPietro has played 5 games, but I’d have to think the Penguins would rank higher if a “quality of loss” could be factored in. Other than Malkin and Staal literally every player has missed time, and with the serious injruies to their top 2 defensemen (Whitney, Gonchar) and the franchise goalie was out about 15 games that is devastating.

But every team has to deal with injuries, so credit the teams (like WSH, CGY, FLA) towards the top half of the league in games missed and points

Mirtle, maybe you ought to add salary in the equation. Loosing 3 goons for 30 games isn’t the same as losing your top 2 centers.

Another suggestion would be to add ‘projected points lost’.

I think one of the teams that really jumps up the list with the “quality” mixed in will be Montreal. Unlike last year, almost every injury they’ve had has been to a key player: Komisarek, Higgins, Koivu, Tanguay, and Price have all missed notable time, along with Dandenault and Laraque.

Oddly enough, they’re about where they were last year, despite this. Imagine if their season series with the Bruins hadn’t done a complete 180 on them.

Look where Chicago was last season for MGL… now compare to this year. Definitely a factor.

And watch Boston’s numbers go up.

but with all the young players, I thought the Blues were very marginal as a playoff contender going into the season…you take at least six of your 10 best players out of the lineup at one time (Johnson, Kariya, McDonald, Brewer, for awhile both Berglund and Oshie were out, as well as both goalies, and now Polak) and there is no way you can expect anything other than what has happened: last in a strong conference…obviously, what you hope for is building your organization depth so that if this happens again next season, you don’t get snowed under…the Blues are reaching a point, IMO, where they have to start making some progress on making the playoffs…people aren’t going to sit around waiting year after year.

Big Picture Guy : “Personally, I would just create hypothetical depth charts for each team and plug in the games lost: Gomez missed 5 games so the Rangers are -5 in the first line center slot, and so on. I realize that doing that way is subjective but it would give you an overall perspective and trying to quantify would be extremely complicated…”

I think that this is a daunting task… but if it was done, then the Isles would look even worse than they do without being weighted this way. A lot of the players that have been out people might shrug their shoulders and not think its a big deal- but for the Isles, those guys were needed more than they probably would have been needed on another team. The injuries the Islanders have endured in the last 13 months really have been unbelievable.