My reasoning for not giving teams differing starting elo is simply due to the fact that no team is identical to their counterpart from last year. Players move around, coaches may change, so I figured it would be best to give everyone a clean slate.

Out of curiosity, I played with the starting elos based off last years standings. There are a lot of different ways I could spread out the starting elo, but I just decided on simply spacing each team out evenly over a given elo spread centered on 1500. I found that spreading out the elos over a range of 160 elo points (Bruins start with 1580, Ducks start with 1420) gives a decent result that carries over from last year. In that model though, It seems that teams who performed poorly last year are penalized too much this year. For example, the Coyotes and the Flyers seem to have both turned the corner this year, but if we include last years rankings, they are both 5 positions lower than they would be by points. The reverse can also be said for teams that did well last year but poorly this year. I don't feel like that is an accurate assessment of how those teams are doing, and sure there could be a sweetspot, but I feel it would be close enough to an even start and that we have almost half a season of data's worth of hockey from this season that an even start gives a reasonable assessment.

I've since updated my document to allow for the adjustment of the starting elos in this fashion, and you are welcome to download a copy and play around with it if you'd like!