Game Analysis: 2020-21 Rangers: 2nd-Largest Gap Between Goal Differential and Standings Points Since 2007-08

[aufheben]

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[TheDirtyH]

love to see the explanation immediately provided for how this looks without the flyer blowouts (largely the same story) and the first comment I see on the tweet is 'what if you take out the flyers blowouts?'

 

[Tawnos]

Running those statistics in premature, isn't it?

 

[aufheben]

The Athletic’s new power rankings:

“14. New York Rangers

Last week: 15
Record: 21-16-6, 48 points
Dom rank: 15
Sean rank: 14

Dom: My favorite stat this season, by far, is that the New York Rangers are sixth in the league in goal differential at plus-28. That leads the entire East division! And yet, New York is on pace for just an average season and are extremely unlikely to make the playoffs. I feel like leading the division in goal differential and missing the playoffs should be mathematically impossible, but here we are in this weird-ass season”

 

[aufheben]

love to see the explanation immediately provided for how this looks without the flyer blowouts (largely the same story) and the first comment I see on the tweet is 'what if you take out the flyers blowouts?'

 

[Peltz]

If anything this really demonstrates why goal differentials aren't that important of a metric. Great teams can win close games. And while the Rangers are continuing to improve, they're a work in progress because they lose a lot of 1 goal games against more mature teams.

It's pretty meaningless to dunk on a struggling team like Philly or NJ. Plus some of this is also going to be about whether you can hit empty nets at the end of close games - who cares as long as you win?

 

[True Blue]

Also, if you drop the two Philly games, shouldn't you also drop the two worst games?

 

[SA16]

If anything this really demonstrates why goal differentials aren't that important of a metric. Great teams can win close games. And while the Rangers are continuing to improve, they're a work in progress because they lose a lot of 1 goal games against more mature teams.

It's pretty meaningless to dunk on a struggling team like Philly or NJ. Plus some of this is also going to be about whether you can hit empty nets at the end of close games - who cares as long as you win?

Wait so you're looking at the graph that @aufheben posted which shows an extremely direct linear correlation and you're takeaway from it is that....goal differential isn't important?

 

[dshea19]

The thing I have noted for the early part of the season is the number of times the other team's goalie had an amazing game against the Rangers. There were lots of one goal games that they probably would have won if the other goalie wasn't having a far above average night. The recent game against Buffalo is a prime example of how things were going early in the season.

 

[GAGLine]

Games 3, 4, 5 and 7 of the season. We had a 1 goal lead going into the 3rd in each of those games, and lost them all. Instead of getting 8 points, we got 2 points. 3 of those games were against Pittsburgh. If we hold those leads, we'd be ahead of both Pittsburgh and Boston right now.

Edit: Correction, we had a 1 goal lead against Buffalo going into the 2nd. Even taking that out, that's 4 more points we should have had, and 6 less for Pittsburgh.

 

[haohmaru]

love to see the explanation immediately provided for how this looks without the flyer blowouts (largely the same story) and the first comment I see on the tweet is 'what if you take out the flyers blowouts?'

The reason not to do this is because the games were played and the scores were what they were. There’s no reason to omit them.

 

[TheDirtyH]

The reason not to do this is because the games were played and the scores were what they were. There’s no reason to omit them.

feel like you guys really didn't read what I wrote

 

[Edge]

I dunno, a lot of this kind of makes sense to me.

Hypothetically speaking, if you win a pair of games by a combined 18-4 and lose four games 3-2, you'd still still have scored 10 more goals than you gave up over the entire six game stretch, yet you'd be sitting back with a 2-4 record.

We lost games we deserved to win earlier in the year, we won games in a fashion no one expected to win other times, we lost some games we really needed to win, and we have more points than two teams currently in the playoffs, but that play in different divisions.

Welcome to 2021.

 

[NYR94]

I figured something like this was going on because I noticed on hockey reference that the Rangers are 7th in goals scored and 9th in goals against. The last time the Rangers finished within the top 10 in both categories was 2014-15.

Just the improvement in defense has been great. Jacques Martin 2021 NYR Non-Player MVP.

 

[haohmaru]

feel like you guys really didn't read what I wrote

I did but maybe the point wasn’t as clear to me as it is to you lol.

 

[Chytilmania]

Fox and Panarin are repeatable. Next year is going to be fun!!

 

[bobbop]

Has anyone else noticed that Panarin improves every year? He is still breaking out!

 

[True Blue]

Has anyone else noticed that Panarin improves every year? He is still breaking out!

Just wait. Quinn will ruin him as well, given enough time.

 

[FireGerardGallant]

Thats what happens when you lose so many goddamn 1 goal games

 

[bobbop]

Just wait. Quinn will ruin him as well, given enough time.

And here, I thought you were coming to your senses.

Sigh...

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Well there goes the narrative of the fake Rangers fans.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Although to be fair, you need to do the analysis taking away all of our wins. Otherwise you're skewing the data and making the Rangers look better than they are.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I dunno, a lot of this kind of makes sense to me.

Hypothetically speaking, if you win a pair of games by a combined 18-4 and lose four games 3-2, you'd still still have scored 10 more goals than you gave up over the entire six game stretch, yet you'd be sitting back with a 2-4 record.

We lost games we deserved to win earlier in the year, we won games in a fashion no one expected to win other times, we lost some games we really needed to win, and we have more points than two teams currently in the playoffs, but that play in different divisions.

Welcome to 2021.

Team that win a bunch of games by blowout tend to be good teams and therefore tend to find close games too.

 

[EdJovanovski]

Has anyone else noticed that Panarin improves every year? He is still breaking out!

I think Panarin and Fox will be two players who age like wine due to how cerebral they are. Panarin might be the smartest forward in the league and Fox might be the smartest dman in the league. Neither rely on any one physical attribute like a big size advantage, McDavid speed, etc. I think both of them might not hit their primes until their 30’s because how their games are shaped around IQ & deception. Panarin also has significantly less NHL mileage on him than most players of his level, was a very late bloomer and has barely had any injuries

 

[duhmetreE]

The Athletic’s new power rankings:

“14. New York Rangers

Last week: 15
Record: 21-16-6, 48 points
Dom rank: 15
Sean rank: 14

Dom: My favorite stat this season, by far, is that the New York Rangers are sixth in the league in goal differential at plus-28. That leads the entire East division! And yet, New York is on pace for just an average season and are extremely unlikely to make the playoffs. I feel like leading the division in goal differential and missing the playoffs should be mathematically impossible, but here we are in this weird-ass season”

We're dynamic and have A LOT of talent. We destroyed a lot of bad defensive teams... Doesn't take anything away from what we did but just like in fighting... styles make the matchups. An analogy that makes sense to me, using MMA...

We're 'elite' strikers. Our style and talent rips apart teams with poor structure and/or other 'strikers' ( NJD, PHI, BUF) .

If we face a fighter/team with 'wrestling', our striking is neutralized to a degree (BOS, NYI ).

We even found success against a team like Washington but struggled against Pitt.. They're both somewhere in between. ( Washingtons man-on-man defense has struggled against us; but I don't know how that would translate in a 7 game series )

We had 25GP against 'playoff teams' up until this point.
We have 10 wins in those 25 GP and only have a winning record against Washington.

25GP | 10-11-4 | 70GF | 68GA

in the macro sense it's respectable for a 'bubble team'... but it's hard to say that we haven't under achieved, up until mid-March...