Somebody at NHL.com doesn’t like Minnesota and Columbus…

 

There’s something interesting happening with the NHL standings over at the league’s official website.

The order of teams in the Eastern Conference is unsurprising – pretty much exactly what one would expect. They’re arranged alphabetically, first by name of their division and then by team name. Here’s a screenshot:

Nothing surprising there.

The Western Conference, however, deviates from the pattern a little bit.

The standings follow the same order as the East, except that somebody has taken the time to move the Blue Jackets and Wild to 14th and 15th place in the conference, respectively. Might someone at the league office be miffed with the results of the NHL’s last wave of expansion?

Update. Via Ross in the comments section and Bruce McCurdy on Twitter comes the most plausible explanation: the NHL drew up the template for their conference standings after the Predators joined the league in 1999, meaning that when Atlanta, Columbus and Minnesota joined the league they got slotted in automatically at the bottom. Because Atlanta moved to Winnipeg they’re actually in the right place alphabetically, but Minnesota and Columbus stand out. That makes sense, but given the woes of the Blue Jackets and Wild the last few years I still find it a funny coincidence.