The Western Conference is an absolute tire fire

The standings in the West are grim, to put it mildly.

There are five elite teams hoovering up points — Calgary, Winnipeg, San Jose, Nashville, and Vegas are all on pace for at least 97 points, and that’s only because Vegas started out slow. And then after that, everyone else just kinda, for lack of a better word, sucks.

Now, there are varying degrees to how much they suck, but the fact that Dallas is by far the next-best team in the bunch tells you kind of a lot. The Stars have a plus-three goal difference and it’s only because their goalies are both .925; the rest of the team is underperforming to the extent that the Jim Lites thing only happened five and a half weeks ago.

After Dallas, everyone in the Western Conference, from Nos. 7 through 15, has a negative goal difference. Which is incredible. Usually you get maybe one in the playoffs, from either conference, to squeak in despite getting outscored over the full 82.

The Stars have been outshot this season (minus-29) and their offense is well below the league average in terms of putting pucks on net (minus-66). Tyler Seguin and Alex Radulov are the only guys even close to sniffing a point a game. They’re two of just four Stars to even have 10 goals this season. And now they’re sixth in the West!

And comfortable there, a whopping four points up on a Minnesota team that might soon spiral out. Because now Mikko Koivu is done for the year, as is Matt Dumba and everyone else is just kinda doing the Minnesota thing of being okay. This is a club just two points and a game in hand above the playoff bubble, and they have a minus-7 goal difference.

Next, occupying the last playoff spot as of this writing, is surging St. Louis, who at one point was among the worst teams in the West and was talking about being open to trading literally anyone on the roster for the right price. Whether that was just to gauge interest, scare some people straight, or actually signal a shift in thinking, it was only in late November that they were declared “open for business.” But even including this recent run (they’re 8-2-1 in the last 11), they still spent much of the time since then being a little better than mediocre both process-wise and in the win column. And despite that success, they’re still minus-6 in goals.

After that you have Vancouver, tied with St. Louis in points but with three additional games played. In terms of points-per-game pace, they’re tied with Colorado with a 1-to-1 ratio, and you have to say that the lack of Elias Pettersson for a bunch of games didn’t help them, but then again no one in their right mind thought this team would be any good this season and, what do you know, they aren’t. Especially when Pettersson is off the ice.

As for those Avs, they’ve looked great lately except they can’t get a save. Like I said the other day, Varlamov looks totally cooked and Grubauer isn’t playing much better. They don’t have a good team defense and that isn’t helping, but they’re a lot like Vancouver or Dallas where they have one great line and everyone else is just kind of middling.

Colorado is tied in points with Edmonton and Chicago, whose woes have been well-publicized, but with games in hand on both. Don’t need to say much more about either except to say that they’re both being propped up by MVP-type contributions from Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane, and very little else.

And those three teams are only two points up on Arizona and Anaheim. Everyone knows about and expects the Coyotes’ difficulties, but keep in mind this comes with the Ducks sitting on a MINUS-51 goal difference — the worst in the league by a margin of almost 50 percent — and having lost 18 of the last 20.

Let’s just reiterate that: Anaheim won two of its last 20 games and it currently sits FOUR points out of the playoffs in the West. It’s a far cry from the 12-3-2 run they enjoyed from mid-November to mid-December, but that was right before they went 0-8-4, won two in a row on the road, then went 0-6-0 again.

Which brings us to Los Angeles, the team everyone gave up for dead after they started out 3-7-1 in October and looked absolutely horrible doing it. As recently as the All-Star break, they were 17-19-3, but because they’ve now won four of their last five games and play in the Western Conference, we have to sit here and talk about how they’re “only five points out!” And hopefully ignore the fact that they traded the guy who’s been their best defenseman this year.

It’s true that they are, but it’s also true that they’re on pace for 76 points this season. That they’re in the playoff conversation at all is an embarrassment to the league and its loser-point system.

Point is, not one of these teams should consider themselves out of it, nor in it. Even the Stars might not be in a position to feel totally safe.

Of course, games in hand all matter a lot here, because St. Louis and Colorado have between one and three on the rest of this ugly field. But the thing about games in hand is that you gotta win ‘em.

And with this group, that’s hardly a sure thing.

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Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.