The Value of Playoff Experience

Pictured: Not Luongo or Schneider.
His mouth may be smiling but his eyes are filled with terror.

My beloved Canucks recently traded away a goalie with 65 games of playoff experience in exchange for Jacob Markstrom...who has played in exactly zero playoff games. Markstrom will play backup to Eddie Lack...who has also played zero playoff games. Pulling out my abacus and doing some simple calculations, I deduce that the Canucks now have two goalies who combine for the same amount of NHL postseason experience as my left shoe! 

So what exactly was Mike Gillis thinking?

To assess this trade, we need to examine what post-season experience is actually worth in evaluating goalies. How poorly does the average goaltender play in his first NHL game compared to his tenth? Or twentieth? How long does it take before the jitters wear off?

Recent Stanley Cup Champion, Corey Crawford, needed four playoff games to earn his first win. Henrik Lundqvist couldn’t get his save percentage above .875 until his fifth game. In a best-of-seven playoff format, four or five games could mean an entire season.

There are 30 active goaltenders in the NHL who have started at least five playoff games. Among those 30, only 11 won their playoff debut, the most recent being Michal Neuvirth in 2011.

So how many games does the average goalie need to notch his first playoff win? Surprisingly, it’s only 1.96. In other words, most goalies are able to win at least one of their first two games. Bear in mind that we’re looking exclusively at goalies who have started at least five playoff games, so we’re taking an elite sample. But in playoff games, these elite goalies are predominantly playing against other elite goalies, so the average winning percentage should stay close to 50% (it’s actually 52%).

Alright, so given that the average elite goaltender wins 52% of the time, how does that percentage vary given the number of playoff games he’s previously played?

Looking at the chart, it seems that goalies begin just above-average and then steadily improve over their first thirty games before suddenly crashing at the 31-35 mark. 

The 30th Game Cold-Streak

It’s a strange phenomenon, but on-the-whole, goalies seem to play consistently well in games 25-29 (winning 53-76% of their games), then consistently poor in games 30-35 (winning only 35-52%), then back to above-average in games 36-41 (winning 54-69%). 

Get this: Henrik Lundqvist, Roberto Luongo, Jonathan Quick, Ryan Miller, Nikolai Khabibulin, and Antti Niemi combined for an impressive 21-9 record in games 25-29 of their respective playoff careers (6 goalies times 5 games each), but then dropped to an ice-cold 11-25 record in games 30-35 before upswinging to 20-15 in games 36-41.

What is it about playing in your 30^th playoff game that makes you hit a six-game cold streak? Even the great Martin Brodeur lost three straight beginning with his 30^th playoff game before winning 9 in a row afterwards.

More importantly, which goalies are likely to reach their 30^th game this year? Carey Price is probably the only one (he’s played 26 thus far). But then again, he’s lost 10 of his last 14 playoff games, so maybe he just hit his slump early.

The Phoenix Coyotes are my favourite dark-horse playoff team this year, not only because they wear the right colours, but also because they’ve held their ownagainst the Sharks and Blues during the regular season. And if you need another reason to fear Phoenix: Mike Smith is heading into his prime playoff games, but he’s still distant enough from his 30^th.

Another statistic to consider is save percentage. Because we’re in elite company, the average playoff save percentage is .912. Does that fluctuate with experience?

This graph is a little more erratic, but has an overall positive trend for the first 40-45 games before a dramatic drop-off (presumably due to aging).

Between these two charts, it’s fairly safe to say that a goalie’s performance peaks around his 40^th career playoff start. Let’s see…which goalies are coming up on their 40^th game?

…Corey Crawford (36) and Tuukka Rask (35)…well, that’s just great. Oh well, at least those two are peaking when the Canucks won’t even be around. Oh hey, I forgot about the Canucks!

So did the Canucks really get ripped off by gaining a goalie with zero games of experience while losing another with 65 games?

Nah, I think this one will pay off. 

Blue Teams Finish Last

            “Okay guys, we’ve got our team name, we’ve got our logo, now we just need to pick our team colours. Dave?”

            “I like red. It’s the colour of blood and war. It’ll inspire our team to battle for glory!”

            “Interesting. Jim?”

“Black, so we can strike fear into the hearts of corruption and injustice…and our opponents.”

“Cool. I especially like the raspy voice. Greg?”

“We should go with yellow. It’ll be cheaper to give away free t-shirts on fan appreciation nights.”

“That’s my favourite so far. Alright, let’s discuss our options until we come to a consensus.”

(5 hours later)

“(Sigh) Okay guys, for the sake of unity, let’s just go with blue. Would everyone be satisfied with blue?”

“Sure. Okay. Fine.”

Ahh...the sweet hue of compromise.

It’s no surprise that at any given time, roughly a third of the teams in the NHL wear blue as their primary colour. Blue, after all, is the favourite colour of more than half of US adults. What is a surprise however, is how rare it is to see any of those teams hoist a Cup. Here’s a collage of the last 18 Stanley Cup Champions going back to 1995.

Aside from the trim in the Colorado and Tampa Bay uniforms, that picture is devoid of the colour blue (unless you count the Canucks jerseys behind Zdeno Chara's massive grinning head). So what the heck is going on?

            But before we get to that, WAIT, it gets even weirder! Even if you look at the losing team in the Stanley Cup Finals, there are only three teams going back to 1984:

The 2011 Vancouver Canucks, The 2006 Edmonton Oilers, and the 1998 Washington Capitals are the only blue teams to appear in the Stanley Cup Finals since 1994.

             Theoretically, with one third of the teams wearing primarily blue, we should expect to see a blue-jerseyed Stanley Cup Champion every three years. But in reality, you’re worse-off wearing blue than you are being from Canada. No wonder teams like Toronto and Vancouver are so championship-starved. The Canucks have only been to the Finals three times, and only once wearing blue. The ever-blue Leafs haven’t even seen the Finals since 1967.

            Quick, name some teams that seem to be perpetually above-average or better. Are they also perpetually red?

Pictured: Winners

Okay, the Chicago Blackhawks only recently became good after many seasons of being awful, but I needed a fourth team to symmetrize the image.

Time for some NHL trivia. Which team has the longest current Stanley Cup drought?

Hint: Formerly known as the Toronto Blueshirts

Which team has the longest all-time Stanley Cup drought?

Hint: Colloquially known as the Broadway Blueshirts 

Which is the oldest team to have never won a Stanley Cup?

Hint: They have the word "Blue" right in their name!

Which two teams are tied for the second-oldest?

Da-ba-dee-da-ba-daa.

Which was the last team to make their first post-season appearance?

Hint: They're still waiting for that first post-season win.

The San Jose Sharks are a team that’s never terrible, but can never seem to go all the way. Maybe it’s because they’re always kind-of blue, kind-of not. The Penguins dabbled into baby-blue territory, but then Crosby got hurt so they presumably decided not to tempt the Hockey Gods further and returned to black. The Florida Panthers and Nashville Predators both went blue for a couple of seasons recently, but then decided that they didn't need to inhibit themselves further.

On second thought, I like our odds better with mustard yellow.

            Is there any rhyme or reason to the overarching inferiority of blue teams, or is red just a lucky colour? According to an article by Ben Leach of The Telegraph, a study by sports psychologists at the University of Munster revealed that in contact sports, teams wearing red are victorious 5-10% more frequently. Norbert Hagemann, the leader of the study, commented, "If one competitor is strong and the other weak, it won't change the outcome of the fight. But the closer the levels, the easier it is for the colour to tip the scales".

            Why is red linked to success? It could be that the colour red is a stimulant that imbalances the opposing teams mentality. Blue, on the other hand, is a relaxant (which is it’s a popular “favourite” colour). Or perhaps being surrounded by red jerseys pregame energizes the team wearing that colour.

            Since 1995, the average blue-coloured team has a 1.6% chance of making it to the finals compared to a 5% chance for the average red-coloured team, and a 4% chance for the average black-coloured team.

            Now maybe you’re thinking that I, as a Canucks fan, am trying to make excuses for my team’s lack of success.

1)      Shut up.

2)      My argument goes for all blue teams.

Or maybe you’re thinking that I’m cherry-picking examples to support a weak argument. How do I explain the success of the 1980s New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers?

Notice that the Munster study concluded that a blue uniform won’t inhibit a clearly stronger competitor. And the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers were hardly flukes in the 80s; they were dynasties loaded with superstars. They could’ve worn pink leotards and blown away the competition.

So if you want to see team success, forget about all the subtle roster changes and coaching. Just ditch the stupid blue uniforms. I don’t know why 90% of teams choose either blue, red, or black. The Anaheim Ducks looked fine in eggplant and jade until they switched to black and…won a Stanley Cup the following season…okay, bad example.

Even Teemu looks dorky in those colours.

Remember those horrible Canucks jerseys from the 80s that everyone likes to make fun of?

 

Harold Snepsts and Darcy Rota accept the award for Most Overachieving Team Ever

Say what you will – they were designed by a sports psychologist for the purpose of intimidation, and what happened? They somehow made it to the Finals with a team of nobodies. I rest my case, thank you very much.

Now excuse me as I watch youtube videos until the image of Mark Messier in a pink leotard vacates my mind.

You're welcome.

The Churko Formula

Congratulations to the 2013 Stanley Cup Champions, the Chicago Blackhawks.

I had the same incredulous expression when Bickell scored

I am writing this article on May 29th, three weeks prior to their win, simply because I already know that they shall win with 83% confidence. I owe it all to The Churko Formula.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you the formula in a minute…

I spent weeks pouring over data of past playoff winners to find a consistent predictor of winners using regular-season statistics. I compared winners head-to-head against losers in dozens of different categories to find the best indicator of victory.

To determine a reliable measurement, I wanted to find a formula that not only predicted winners with more than 50% accuracy, but predicted winners with more than 50% accuracy in each individual season.

For example, if you look at the 75 playoff series going back to 2008, the team with the superior regular-season GAA (goals against average) wins 56% of the time (42/75). However, in 2009, the team having allowed fewer regular season goals accounted for only 6 of the playoff series wins, accounting for only a 40% success rate.

I compared powerplay efficiency, penalty killing efficiency, the sum of their powerplay and penalty killing efficiency, 5-on-5 puck possession, 5-on-5 scoring rate, and even which team was wearing the most dominant colours (the order of colours goes: red, orange, black, other, blue).

None of these variables gave me >50% in each of the past eight seasons (2004-2012).

And then I came up with a stupidly simple concept:

Why not just look at who won the season series?

I mean, hey, if one team was successful against another team during the regular season, then they should also be able to beat them in the playoffs, right?

Here is the method to The Churko Formula, step-by-step:

1)      Look at the regular season games played between the two teams.

2)      Ignore games that were decided in a shootout. There are no shootouts in the playoffs. Treat those games as Ties.

3)      Pick whichever team won more (non-shootout) games in the season series. The team that wins the season-series wins in the playoffs 60% of the time.

4)      If the two teams tied in season-series wins, simply pick the higher-seeded team to win. In playoff series in which the teams had tied the season-series, the higher-seeded team won 74% of the series.

Not only is this method correct more than 50% of the time, but it had never failed to pick at least 8/15 winners going back eight seasons. From 2004-2012, it had successfully picked the winner of 8-11 out of the 15 series in each year.

Even in the 2012 playoffs, which were considered to have had ‘unpredictable’ results, the formula still saw a 60% success rate. Remember in 2010 when all three of the top-seeded teams in the Eastern Conference lost in the first round? All three lost their respective season series! So the Formula would have predicted all three upsets!

So I put the Formula into practice for the 2013 playoffs, and it proved even more effective than expected. It successfully predicted 7/8 first-round matchups (it only failed to predict Ottawa defeating Montreal). Then it went a perfect 4/4 in the second-round. It failed to predict Boston defeating Pittsburgh in the Eastern Finals, but it succeeded in predicting Chicago’s run to the Cup.

In conclusion, the team that wins the season series goes on to win the playoff series the majority of the time, and in the case of the 2013 season, 87% of the time. 

Kiss my ass, Fenwick.