Weekly Power Rankings: Marlies no smoke and mirrors

(Please note that I did these BEFORE the Aeros played at Abbotsford on Tuesday ... These reflect games played, records and standings of all teams before Tuesday's games. Thanks.)

The Toronto Marlies have been firmly entrenched behind the OKC Barons in the Weekly Power Rankings. But all of that could change in the coming week to 10 days as the schedule lightens up and strongly favors our neighbors to the North.

Ryan Hamilton is a big reason why the Marlies could
end up as the No. 1 seed

In their last 17 games, the high-scoring Marlies (174 goals for, second only to PEO) will play Hamilton three times; Grand Rapids four times, Lake Erie twice and Texas and Binghamton once. That is 11 games against teams that are probably not going to make the playoffs. Unfortunately for Aeros fans, the OKC Barons have a similar schedule against the have-nots and has-beens, so the No. 1 seed is going to come down to which team takes care of business.

This week, there was, as expected, not a lot of movement at the top. Abbotsford got back on track recently, and I think Milwaukee is close to putting together a nice little winning streak. We'll soon find out if the moves in Nashville stabilized what is going on in Beer town.

The Aeros and Chicago are the only contenders that fell back this week, but even the Wolves saved face with a dominant 4-1 win over OKC. The Wolves scored goals just 7 seconds apart early in the second period to break open the game and chase David LeNeveu out of the game.

I attended that game, and it is kind of eerie how similar it is every time I go to Rosemont. Same pre-game, same Anthem, same PA guy, same music, same dominant team ... it was like 2002 all over again.

The Aeros are a mess right now, and they've got two games left on their road trip before coming home for the first time in more than a month. We'll see if they can put things together long enough to move back into the playoff chase.

2011-12 Western Conference Power Rankings
Edition 6, March 5, 2012

  

PR	Team	Record	Streak	Last	+/-	For the record …
1	OKC	35-17-2-4	0-3	0-2-0-1	-	Looked lost in loss at CHI Sun.
2	TOR	32-20-4-3	0-2	1-1-0-1	-	Very soft schedule coming up
3	CHA	31-19-3-5	0-3	0-0-1-1	-	Keep on losing in OT
4	SAT	32-23-2-1	2-0	2-0-0-0	-	Minus-9 goal differential
5	ABB	31-22-3-2	0-1	2-1-0-0	+3	Huge next 4 vs. HOU and PEO.
6	CHI	31-22-2-3	1-0	1-2-0-0	-1	5 of next 8 on the road
7	MIL	30-23-2-2	1-0	2-1-0-0	+2	This is a playoff team
8	PEO	31-26-2-1	0-1	1-2-0-0	-1	Two regulation wins since 2/15
9	HOU	26-18-3-9	0-1	0-1-0-0	-3	Games in hand on everyone
10	LEM	30-25-2-3	3-0	3-0-0-0	+1	It’s like a light came on
11	RCH	28-22-6-3	2-0	2-1-0-0	-1	Back in the hunt … somehow
12	RFD	26-26-2-5	2-0	2-0-0-1	+1	Points in six straight … wow.
13	GRR	25-22-5-4	0-1	2-1-0-0	-1	Losing key players to Detroit
14	HAM	26-26-1-5	1-0	1-1-0-1	-	Doing enough to stay at .500
15	TEX	25-28-2-2	1-0	1-1-0-0	-	Only sub .500 team in the West