Does anyone have a historical list of NHL parity year-by-year?

The Panther

Registered User
Mar 25, 2014
19,114
15,573
Tokyo, Japan
Sorry to ask a random question and offer nothing, but does anyone have this info?

Math is not my strong point, and I have no idea how to even calculate this, but I'd like to see a breakdown -- season-by-season if possible -- of NHL regular season parity. It would be interesting to exactly which seasons / eras had the most and least parity.
 

tempofound

Registered User
Oct 18, 2013
358
202
I don't have the data at hand and also parity is obviously not a well-defined concept.

But just taking the variance of regular season standings could be an idea and it's simple to apply, I might do it if I find the time. For instance:

1950 variance of regular season standings 150.8.

1969 variance of regular season standings 328.

2018 variance of regular season standings 238.3.

This seems to pass the smell, just based on these three results but it's probably a problem that the seasons are of different length. Looking at variance of points per game:

1950 variance of regular season ppg 0.03077551.

1969 variance of regular season ppg 0.0567867.

2018 variance of regular season ppg 0.03544357.

Again passes smell test, but there is probably more to this. If anyone wants to go deep:

(PDF) Measuring Parity: Tying Into the Idealized Standard Deviation
 
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Hockey Stathead

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Aug 14, 2022
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Sorry to ask a random question and offer nothing, but does anyone have this info?

Math is not my strong point, and I have no idea how to even calculate this, but I'd like to see a breakdown -- season-by-season if possible -- of NHL regular season parity. It would be interesting to exactly which seasons / eras had the most and least parity.

Here's 1 way to measure it. Higher number = more disparity.

Untitled.png
 
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pnep

Registered User
Mar 10, 2004
2,907
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Novosibirsk,Russia
Sorry to ask a random question and offer nothing, but does anyone have this info?

Math is not my strong point, and I have no idea how to even calculate this, but I'd like to see a breakdown -- season-by-season if possible -- of NHL regular season parity. It would be interesting to exactly which seasons / eras had the most and least parity.


Standart Deviation, Win%* (1909-2021)

1662803230356.png



* - High Standart Deviation --> Low parity.​
 
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Hockey Stathead

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Aug 14, 2022
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I am assuming the low-point for the standard deviation here is the 1931-32 season?
1931-32 NHL Summary

With only eight clubs that year, but the disparity is only from .417 to .594, so no teams really dominated and no teams really sucked.
Correct, 1931-1932 had the lowest SD (most parity) in league history.

League went from 10 teams in 1930-1931 to 8 in 1931-1932. The 2 worst teams (Philadelphia Quakers and Ottawa Senators) from 1930-1931 dropped off which likely created this situation.

Senators would return in 1932-1933 to be worst team, by far, in the league.
 

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