History Says Canucks Have Already Lost Stanley Cup Finals (Amazing Stat Alert)

Business Insider ^ | 06/09/11 | Cork Gaines

[nhwingut]

Last night the Boston Bruins blew out the Vancouver Canucks for the second straight game. But while the series might now be even at two games apiece, the series is anything but even.

In sports, one of the best indicators of how good (or bad) a team really is, is to look at that team's goal/run/points differential. That is, the difference between the number of points they have scored and the number of points they have allowed. The bigger the difference, the better a team is.

And in the NHL playoffs, the results so far tell us that the Canucks are lucky they have even gotten this far.

[ArmedConservative]

We were having this conversation at lunch today, the Chief is the logical choice but we were thinking that only Normand Leveille could get a bigger ovation then Bobby Orr.

[Alberta's Child]

Right, but just think about it for a moment:

If you were to go back through all of those seasons and rank the teams TWICE (once at the beginning of the Stanley Cup finals, and once at the end), you'd likely find many cases where the losing team in the Stanley Cup Finals grades out pretty poorly compared to teams that were knocked out earlier. Why? Because losing in the Stanley Cup finals means you've lost anywhere from one (in the case of a series that goes the full seven games) to four (in the case of a sweep) more games than you've won in that series . . . meaning the odds are very good that your goal differential is going to be worse after the Finals than it was before the Finals began.

Another thing to consider here is that peculiarities can heavily influence these numbers, too. Take a look at the 1993 Montreal Canadiens, for example. Their +15 goal differential is one of the lowest numbers on this chart. And yet they had one of the best post-season records of any team in recent decades, losing a total of only four games in their run to the Stanley Cup. They beat Quebec 4-2 in Round 1, swept Buffalo in Round 2, then beat the Islanders in the conference finals and the Kings in the Stanley Cup finals by 4-1 margins.

Why were they only +15 in goal differential when they were an amazing +12 (16 wins, 4 losses) in "win differential," including an NHL record-tying eleven consecutive playoff game victories? Because that was the Montreal team that set another NHL record with victories in ten straight overtime games, which meant that 10 of their 16 victories were won by the absolute minimum possible goal differential (+1).

I find all this really fascinating, especially since hockey usually doesn't lend itself well to these statistical analyses the same way, say, baseball does.

[jeffc]

Fights per se aren't what I meant. It's the crap that goes on after the whistle, and I don't mean the taunts and the words and a shove and, yes, sometimes a fight as tempers boil over.

But I would also want it to NOT be for the bad officiating when they do nothing when players hack at each other's legs with their sticks and go to throw a punch instead of playing the puck.

It's the officiating, or lack of it, or the inconsistency of it, that I wanted to say. Sorry if it sounded like I was against all fights in hockey. Hey, it beats badminton, right?

[jeffc]

I’ll compare today’s NHL to the 70’s NHL if I feel that it is a good illustration, not if I only get permission from C. Edmund Wright. As far as I’m concerned, todays NHL is much better than in the 70’s (I’m watching it again!), and the replays verify my comment on the officiating, as far as I’m concerned, which is what what I’m really focused on, but people love to take things out of context.

[jeffc]

You fail to understand humor. How sad......

[John W]

You’ll get flamed for making a snap judgement watching one game. Thats obvious because some of your comments reflect you haven’t been watching much.

[C. Edmund Wright]

you might want to take under advisement your ability to clearly put your thoughts into words, since you’re being flamed all over.

Your posts do not make sense in light of your earlier posts.

“What we have here is a failure to communicate....”

[airborne]

Hockey Ping!

(let me know if you want on or off the ping list)

[canuck_conservative]

Physicality isn’t part of hockey?

News flash for ya - neither is biting another player’s finger (with no penalty or suspension). Neither is trying to decapitate one of your opponent’s star players, especially when he doesn’t even have the puck anymore.

Canucks started the rough stuff, and now they want to complain about it? They were up 2-0 in games, Boston was sleeping, and they woke them up with the Horton attempted-assassination. WHY??

[wiggen]

1980 +23
1981 +49
1982 +33
1983 +41
All the NY Islanders.

[rlmorel]

I began watching hockey in 1975 when I moved up here to New England, and got hooked. I began to play goal in men’s leagues when I got out of the Navy and played for 15 years...

I was really into it, all my buddies were. The Adams Division rivalries, Montreal, Quebec, etc just made it a blast.

Then the game began to change with the trap, the restructuring of the divisions and such, and by the late nineties, I simply could not watch it anymore. They took all the intensity and fun out of it for me. Here is what the game seemed like to me in the nineties:

Faceoff.
Puck in the corner. Grapple. Grasp. Struggle. Muck. Clutch. Grab. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Icing. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Puck out of play. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Skate through the neutral zone. Offside. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Shot. Goalie ties up puck. Whistle.

REPEAT.

The game became so mind numbingly boring I couldn’t bear to watch it.

I have only watched infrequent games this decade, but when I began watching the Montreal-Boston series, I was amazed at how different the game was. So much faster, no whistles.

But when I saw Thomas lay the lumber on that guy, I could see the heart of the game still existed...:)

I would still rather watch a physical game rather than a finesse game. But that is me. Some people like it the other way around.

[rlmorel]

We were talking about Bossy (and that original helmet that never seemed to fit him right) last night...what a player.

Of course, at the end, we ended up with Butch Goring who seemed to have an even more iconic helmet...

[Betis70]

Since the lockout, it is much more fun to watch again, but this year and last are standouts in the playoffs. There have been some very intense, free-flowing hockey (still with physical play) without all the clutch and grab stuff.

Ah the old Adams Division. That was fun stuff, even if my boyhood team (The Whalers) was the perennial bottom feeders.

[Alberta's Child]

Then the game began to change with the trap, the restructuring of the divisions and such, and by the late nineties, I simply could not watch it anymore. They took all the intensity and fun out of it for me. Here is what the game seemed like to me in the nineties:

I think you overlooked a number of things about hockey in the 1990s. For one thing, the "trap" didn't just appear out of nowhere in the 1990s. In fact, the Montreal Canadiens had adopted and perfected it more than 25 years earlier (which explains why the Devils became the standard-bearer for the neutral-zone trap in the 1990s, with Montreal Hall of Famers Jacques Lemaire and Larry Robinson serving as the core of their coaching staff).

Montreal was a dominant offensive team when they played the trap, and the Devils were a very underrated offensive team as well (just look at their offensive numbers in those five or six years between 1994 and 2003 when they were legitimate Stanley Cup contenders).

What really brought about the decline of hockey in the 1990s was expansion in that era. There simply wasn't enough talent to fill the rosters of all those teams, so the NHL ended up with so many players who should have been third-line and fourth-line forwards and #5/#6 defensemen creeping up on rosters and being forced to play key roles on many teams. That's not going to change unless the NHL starts cultivating a heck of a lot more talent, or until the NHL seriously considers contracting to a 20-team or 24-team league.

[discostu]

Friday night the statistics said Vancouver had already won. Now they say they already lost. That’s the funny part about stats, especially when using them to try to predict the future.

[jeffc]

Ha Ha! Funny. Stupid, but funny (your inability to comprehend someone other than yourself). Have fun!

[jeffc]

You’ll get flamed for making a snap judgement watching one game. Thats obvious because some of your comments reflect you haven’t been watching much.

I only posted one observation; they are many others as you imply. I've been watching the playoffs since the beginning and had high hopes for the Lightning as they played so well. Almost reminded me of 2004. I've actually been disgusted with the officiating from the start of the playoffs, seems so different from the regular season.

[rlmorel]

I was humming the “Brass Bonanza” every time the Bruins scored last night...:)

[Varda]

Interesting! I thought this was going to be about Conference winners in a seven game series always winning the Stanley Cup. This is another good omen. Go Bruins! Bobby Orr is watching.