It seems like we were doing these sobering projections last year. And hoping that when this year rolled around, we wouldn't have to be doing the same sobering projections.

But here we are as the Stars are mired in 11th place in the West...doing these same sobering projections.

As of right now, the Stars have a mark of 19-16-11 giving them 49 points through 46 games. They have a winning percentage of .413. By comparison, last year's team had a winning percentage of .439.

The .413 winning percentage that Dallas has posted this season is the third worst winning percentage in the Western Conference.



Last year's team finished with 83 points and 8 points out of a playoff spot. This year's team is on pace to finish with 87 points...but still 8 points out of a playoff spot (Detroit is on pace to get the 8th seed with 95 points, BTW).

Dallas has a point percentage of .532 (49 points out of a possible 92 points = .532). Or to point it another way, they've picked up 1.064 points out of a possible two points per game.

Based on the point projections of the rest of the teams in the West, the Stars would need to increase their point percentage to .781 per game, or 1.566 just to even make the playoffs.



the playoffs. And BTW, six teams are projected to hit the century mark, at least, for points.

As for the really sobering news? Follow the jump

SportsClubStats is a site that's been around for a few years. As sports stats nerd, it's one of my favorite sites to visit because they compute playoff chances for every team in the NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA and a few other sports as well. Even Motorsports!

In addition, you can also track your team's playoff chances throughout the year.

Here's a link to a full screen interactive graph for the Stars playoff chance projections throughout the year. Keep in mind that early season results tend to skew the numbers quite a bit. The further along you go on the season, the more accurate the results are.

As of today, they've got the Stars chances of making the playoffs pegged at 12.6 percent. A day after they beat the Red Wings 4-3 at home on December 19th, they were just a tad over the 50% mark for the season. And since the calendar year flipped over to 2010, their chances have taken a nose dive.

Just to even get to a 50/50 proposition to make the playoffs according to SportsClubStats, the Stars would need to go 20-12-4 over their final 36 games. And that would only get them to 93 points...and 39 wins on the year. And since 10 teams are projected to win at least 40 games?

You get the picture. And it's not pretty.