It's all about winning four of seven

by Gould Old Days on Mar 31, 2009 11:43 PM EDT Comment 8 comments

Winning the Stanley Cup is relatively simple: All you have to do is win four games out of every seven in the playoffs. With that in mind, I thought I'd look at the top cup contenders and check, for every seven game stretch in the season, how often they won 4 or more and how often they had a losing record. I treated losses and overtime losses as the same thing, since they're the same in the playoffs. Here's the raw data in a spreadsheet (use the tabs at the bottom to look at individual teams).

Here's the summary in a table. There are about 70 seven-game stretches for each team so far, since they overlap. So think of this as a measure of consistency over the course of the season.

Team	W	L/OTL	Win 4/7	Lose 4/7
Wings	49	27	64	6
Sharks	50	26	57	13
Devils	47	29	55	15
Caps	46	30	51	19
Flyers	41	34	51	19
Bruins	48	27	49	21

This really makes the Wings look like the team to beat. They basically don't slump. Which is the key to the playoffs, because it only takes one slump in the postseason to knock you out.

The results with the Bruins are very interesting. Only the Sharks have lost fewer games, but the Bruins have clustered their losses while the Wings and Sharks have spread them out. If you look at the Bruins tab on the spreadsheet, you'll see that they had a really long cold stretch in February and March.

The data makes the Devils look like the top team in the east. Pretty amazing that even without Brodeur for much of the season they've been so consistent.

The Caps have had their share of down stretches, so they definitely look vulnerable. Likewise the Flyers. But of course this is data about the regular season. And teams almost never play seven straight games against playoff teams during the regular season. It's tougher to win four in the playoffs.

Edited: Someone added the Canadiens to the spreadsheet. Here's what their season looks like.

Team	W	L/OTL	Win 4/7	Lose 4/7
Canadiens	39	37	33	37

If this FanPost is written by someone other than one of the blog's authors, the opinions expressed in it do not necessarily reflect those of this blog or SB Nation.

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Good stuff.

I suppose another factor in looking at these 7 game tranches is the extent of the bunching of the strength of opponents. Although, given the Caps’ record against top teams, it wouldn’t really change things.

I think the most telling metrics for playoff success are team records against other playoff teams, and how hot each team is going into the playoffs.

by Pivonka, Michael Ridley on Apr 1, 2009 2:33 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Nice. That’s quite an imaginative way of looking at things.

Regarding being hot entering the second season, I’ll point to a couple of observations by others here – B.Orr and JP – and say that it only matters when it matters. The Caps were hot as a pistol coming into the playoffs last year, and there have been a good sampling of Cup winners who were kinda lukewarm coming into the playoffs in recent years.

GOD, if you have the time, it would be interesting to see what the past Cup winners and runners-up (i.e., best in the East and the West) did in their 7-game reg season stretches. Might give us an idea of the predictive value of your metric.

Either way, I like it.

by fat_daddyo on Apr 1, 2009 8:05 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

And looky here – Gould Old Days gets the site’s first FanPost linked to from the Mighty Kukla. Bravo, sir.

Japers' Rink: Hockey blogging from the most powerful city in the world

by J.P. on Apr 1, 2009 9:04 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Sweet!

What I did isn’t hard to do (maybe 5 minutes per team), and all of the work is shown on the public spreadsheet, so anyone can do this kind of analysis for any team or back through history. And I’ve opened up the spreadsheet to collaboration — you can do it right there if you want.

So if anyone takes issue with my choice of teams (this is a Caps site after all) or just wants to extend the work, feel free to add another tab in the spreadsheet. I’ve done about as much with this as I was planning to, so don’t count on me adding any more teams. If anyone wants to compare the 08/09 Wings to the 07/08 Wings or if anyone wants to add the rest of this year’s playoff teams, by all means go ahead.

by Gould Old Days on Apr 1, 2009 9:41 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don’t like what you’re saying about my bruins. Makes me worry.

Join me on the Hockey Blog Adventure!

by Cornelius Hardenbergh on Apr 1, 2009 10:17 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Isn’t it interesting…

The fanbases of the top teams in the East are more worried than the fanbases of the #4-8 teams (well, except Montreal’s fanbase. They’re probably suicidal at this point).

The keyboard is mightier.

by breed16 on Apr 1, 2009 10:20 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Well, if they’ve been clustering their losses, that also means they’ve been clustering wins. So they’re capable of long stretches of being very hot…

by Gould Old Days on Apr 1, 2009 11:16 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Russian Machine Never Breaks

by macvechkin on Apr 1, 2009 11:25 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

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