Noon Number (November 27th): 3

Let's take a look at some of the numbers for the Wild, the Coyotes and the Avalanche to see how scary these match-ups really are.

The Avs have had a fast start, though the underling numbers suggest it's built on a house of cards (more on that later). From the media reports, you'd swear the Coyotes were leading the Conference when in fact they're behind the Wild.

The Wild are mixing-it-up with the big boys in terms of puck possession. The Avs are in the bottom half of the league, and the Coyotes are in the bottom-10. FenClose correlates very strongly with success so Wild fans should feel good about this. Avs and Coyotes fans should be concerned.

All 3 teams are top-10 in terms of PDO. The Wild's PDO is very much driven by their Sv%, while their Sh% is still one of the lowest in the league.

The Avs look like a strong candidate to collapse down the stretch when their Sh% and Sv% start to regress to the mean. They are being consistently out-possessed/out-attempted while getting unsustainable shooting and goaltending, so unless they've discovered some way to consistently get more high quality shot attempts for than anyone else and prevent high quality attempts better too, they are probably not as good as their standings position suggests and are likely to run into trouble down the stretch.

Just today, Rob Vollman of HockeyAbstract.com put together these "luck" rankings based on a bunch of different factors, and the Avalanche came out on top as the luckiest team in the league so far.

The Wild have had the best powerplay of the group so far this year, though all 3 teams are in the top-half of the league.

The Wild and Coyotes are both fairly bad on the penalty kill, while the Avs are pretty good.