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.