from the article:
Luck plays a massive role in determining the outcome of National Hockey League games, mostly due to the parity, introduced by the salary cap, and because of the relatively low number of events per game.
What is this supposed to mean? What is this relative to? It's a real-time sport; there are literally an infinite amount of events per game.
Scoring events. In basketball, because there are so many opportunities to take shots throughout the game, missing one shot doesn't matter that much. You need to score baskets consistently to win the game. Similarly in football, you need to string together a series of yard-gaining plays in order to score. You need to make good plays again and again to win the game.
Meanwhile in hockey, two or three good plays is usually enough to win the game. So basically, there's a lot more parity between teams because even the worst teams in the league can usually put together a few good scoring chances, and if those go in you've got a win. I think his point was that in the NHL, being 1st in the West at this point of the season doesn't mean all that much, while it'd mean a lot more to be 1st in an NBA conference at this time of year.