Break up the St. Louis Blues, they're unstoppable! Yes, last year's playoff also-ran is now at the top of the Aggregated NHL Power Rankings after a slow but steady climb. After the Blue and the Kings, well, we've got a lot of change this week. One of the interesting things of aggregating all of this data is that you see how some of the writers sort this out -- some look purely at the short term and some have a slightly bigger-picture perspective.

In any case, here are this week's rankings with some analysis and the usual breakdowns after the jump. Plus, a brand new feature this week: standard deviation!

Note that Sports Illustrated's power rankings were on hiatus this week, so the data set was one less than usual.

What a difference a week makes, huh? Those Preds, who started off the season so hot, dropped a gigantic twelve spots. On the flip side, everyone is on the Minnesota Wild bandwagon, and suddenly the Ottawa Senators aren't the sad sacks of the league. It's good to see the Columbus Blue Jackets make a steady climb up the rankings; despite their standing in the NHL marketability picture, at least pundits are taking them seriously. Ok, well, as serious as power rankings could be.

As for those New Jersey Devils, they're still ranked 30th. Really, they should be ranked 31st after Ilya Kovalchuk's awesome failed shootout attempt.

Here are the conference rankings. Note that the SBN ones weren't posted as of this posting, so no comparison right now but I'll update it when it's there.

Western Conference

Eastern Conference

And now, everyone's favorite part, the mega-spreadsheet! Notice the new column at the end for standard deviation.

And here's a new wrinkle which helps quantify the Most Consensus and Biggest Outlier teams that have been featured each week -- a table sorted purely by standard deviation:

Biggest Outlier: Can't make heads or tails of this year's Ottawa Senators team? Don't worry, you're in good company. CBS and ESPN had them ranked in the top third, The Hockey News and Sportsnet had them smack in the middle of the league, and TSN brought the Ottawa hate in by pegging them at 24 (start your Toronto-based-bias conspiracy theory here). Here's what TSN had to say about the Sens:

Winning five of six, the Sens look to be headed in the right direction; it's remarkable what happens once RW Alex Kovalev becomes a contributing factor.

Gee, that seems polite, if not a little praiseworthy. Guess TSN's looking at the big picture after all.

Most Consensus: Both the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues had all but one of the same ranking. Of course, the big difference was that the Blues were at the very top of the list and the Flames were at the very bottom. But hey, consistency!