Quartermark Point: 77 OTL through 303 games...

...for a rate of 25.4%, up from last year's 22.9% (282/1230).

League-wide, 282 extra points were dumped into the standings in 2008-09 by contests tied after regulation, for 9.4 extra points per team. In a league where 16/30 teams make the playoffs, one can reasonably predict the cutoff for points necessary for qualification as simply 82+the average extra points per team. Last year, 91 was sufficient for Anaheim, but Florida got hosed despite having 93, losing the tiebreaker to The Team From Québec Who Shall Not Be Named.

At this year's 25.4% overtime rate (assuming it persists), we can expect about 312 extra points to end up in the standings by year's end, or 10.4 per team. This suggests that the playoff cutoff will be 92 or 93, with 95 being a virtual lock (somewhere, Andy Murray nods).

Achieving 95 points simply involves reaching +13 in the W/L columns regardless of how many OT points are earned. The Kings currently stand at +5 through 23 games, which projects to +18 (for a nice round 100 points overall). So on the one hand, we could say they only need to go +8 through the last 59 games to reach +13 and make it in, but much more satisfying is seeing that the current pace is more than enough for second season hockey to return to the Staples Center. Should Smyth's and Scuderi's absences knock the Kings off that pace for the second quarter of the season--let's say they only break even in the W/L columns and find themselves still at +5 around the end of the year--they would still be on pace to reach +12, which may very well be enough but is at least a couple points from safe.

We all know that the key to this is for Frolov to simply go to the net after a 30-second behind-the-net possession masterpiece that ends anticlimactically with a dish to the point, so that at least he can set up a screen for whatever frisbee Doughty or JMFJ launches toward the net.