Relative schedule strengths

A recent post I saw on a message board got me thinking.....which teams have had the toughest schedule so far this season? So, I worked it out. Below is the average winning percentage of each team's opponents to date. To calculate this, I took the winning percentage of each opponent ON THE DAY OF THE GAME and totalled them, then divided by games played. This should reflect the strength of the opponent at the time the game was played, not necessarily today.

The results:

Prince George: 0.742
Kelowna: 0.695
Portland: 0.671
Kootenay: 0.623
Prince Albert: 0.611
Red Deer: 0.61
Chilliwack: 0.607
Vancouver: 0.603
Kamloops: 0.6
Lethbridge: 0.587
Edmonton: 0.56
Saskatoon: 0.555
Tri City: 0.55
Medicine Hat: 0.538
Everett: 0.538
Moose Jaw: 0.535
Swift Current: 0.53
Brandon: 0.522
Calgary: 0.519
Spokane: 0.503
Regina: 0.477
Seattle: 0.438

Surprise, surprise.....the worst teams have generally faced the toughest schedules, while the best teams have generally had easier schedules. Notable exceptions would be a team like Chilliwack, which has faced an average .607 opponent but have managed a .700 record against those opponents. Impressive.

That's your stat fact for the day.....

UPDATE: I got an e-mailed question asking for clarification on how these numbers were calculated, and pointing out that almost every team has faced an average opponent over .500, which seems questionable. Well, to answer the 2nd question, the "average" team in the WHL so far this year is .549, not .500, since some games can have 3 points awarded and others only 2.

To answer the first question, I'll give an example. I'll use Seattle since they have played the fewest games. Here's Seattle's schedule so far, with the winning percentage of their opponent at the time of the game:

Sep 22: @ Kamloops (1.000)
Sep 29: Everett (.000)
Oct 5: @ Kelowna (.375)
Oct 6: Kelowna (.300)
Oct 12: Tri-City (.875)
Oct 13: Kamloops (.500)
Oct 17: @ Chilliwack (.700)
Oct 19: Vancouver (.800)
Oct 20: @ Portland (.100)
Oct 26: Saskatoon (.269)
Oct 27: @ Spokane (.769)
Oct 28: Brandon (.567)

Add up all those winning percentages (comes to 5.255) and divide by 12 total games to get an average (.438). And yes, the numbers are skewed slightly higher by the fact that I started every team at 1.000 at the start of the season instead of at .000. Matters little; had I started them at .000 the numbers would have skewed lower instead. As the season progresses, that initial 1.000 will become less and less significant in this stat.