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- Sep 18, 2006
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Post on my blog, also posted in it's entirety below:
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Back in December I did a piece that investigated regular season shot differentials predicting future playoff success in the Western Hockey League.
In summary, it found that during the 2013-14 playoffs, the team who had the better regular season shot differential won far more playoff series’ than they lost. In fact, the “leader” of the two teams in that category won 12 of the 15 best of 7 matchups during the 2013-14 WHL playoffs. I felt that was a pretty substantial amount, especially considering someone like a sports bettor would be more than happy to predict individual games at a 60 or 65 per cent rate.
But at the end of the day, that was only one season worth of data. Many would say that it’s hardly a big enough sample size to really draw any major conclusions from. But, since then we’ve seen some additional data come forward thanks to Josh Weissbock at CHLStats.com.
He recently updated his website to include data going back two more seasons, allowing me to dig further into this idea with a larger sample size to draw from.
As stated in my last piece, the results are once again interesting even if they’re not overly surprising given the concept of what we’re talking about.
The Estimated Fenwick data measures shot differentials, so one would expect that the better the team, the better they are at either getting or suppressing shots. That’s not a ground-breaking concept. Teams that generate more chances than they surrender tend to win more often.
As mentioned, the data from the 2013-14 WHL playoffs found that the team with the better regular season shot differential number won 12 of the 15 series throughout the entire postseason. That included going 5-3 in round one before going perfect (7-0) through the subsequent two rounds and WHL Championship series. Breaking it down into games, the team with the higher regular season Fenwick number won 49 of the 74 games. That’s 66%.
Going back to the year previous, 2012-13, the overall series winning percentage was identical in the WHL playoffs. The team with the better regular season Fenwick had 12 series wins compared to only three losses:
Once again breaking that information down game by game, the numbers weren’t quite as impressive as 2013-14. With that being said, the team with the higher regular season Fenwick number still won 62% of all WHL postseason games in 2013, going 48-29 overall.
Going back further, to 2011-12, we finally see the series winning percentage dip just a hair compared to 2012-13 and 2013-14. The only real difference was that Edmonton beat Portland in the WHL Championship Series, despite Portland having a slightly higher regular season Fenwick:
But breaking the 2011-12 playoffs down game-by-game, we see the highest individual game winning percentage out of the past three postseasons. The team with the higher Fenwick number in the regular season won a whopping 68% of all playoff games in 2012, winning 51 times and losing only 23 times.
Now we look at the three years at hand combined. This is what you get when you combine the playoff series winners as a whole:
Combining the three playoff years into game-by-game data, we get a record of 148-77 when simply choosing the team who had the higher regular season Fenwick. That’s nearly 66%.
So to recap, over the past three WHL postseasons:
- The team with the higher regular season Fenwick has won 77.7% of all series.
- The team with the higher regular season Fenwick has won 65.7% of all individual games.
Now that we have three full playoff seasons combined it provides a much safer sample size to draw basic conclusions from. Teams who get more shots than they give up tend to win more in the playoffs. That makes total sense when you are not just dealing with one-off situations, but extrapolate it over a full series. The team who has a recent history of generating more chances will give themselves a better chance to win games, and eventually a full series.
Keep that in mind when making your predictions for the fast-approaching 2014-15 WHL playoffs.
Thanks for reading.
(The Estimated Fenwick data used is courtesy of Josh Weissbock and can be found here)
========
Back in December I did a piece that investigated regular season shot differentials predicting future playoff success in the Western Hockey League.
In summary, it found that during the 2013-14 playoffs, the team who had the better regular season shot differential won far more playoff series’ than they lost. In fact, the “leader” of the two teams in that category won 12 of the 15 best of 7 matchups during the 2013-14 WHL playoffs. I felt that was a pretty substantial amount, especially considering someone like a sports bettor would be more than happy to predict individual games at a 60 or 65 per cent rate.
But at the end of the day, that was only one season worth of data. Many would say that it’s hardly a big enough sample size to really draw any major conclusions from. But, since then we’ve seen some additional data come forward thanks to Josh Weissbock at CHLStats.com.
He recently updated his website to include data going back two more seasons, allowing me to dig further into this idea with a larger sample size to draw from.
As stated in my last piece, the results are once again interesting even if they’re not overly surprising given the concept of what we’re talking about.
The Estimated Fenwick data measures shot differentials, so one would expect that the better the team, the better they are at either getting or suppressing shots. That’s not a ground-breaking concept. Teams that generate more chances than they surrender tend to win more often.
As mentioned, the data from the 2013-14 WHL playoffs found that the team with the better regular season shot differential number won 12 of the 15 series throughout the entire postseason. That included going 5-3 in round one before going perfect (7-0) through the subsequent two rounds and WHL Championship series. Breaking it down into games, the team with the higher regular season Fenwick number won 49 of the 74 games. That’s 66%.
Going back to the year previous, 2012-13, the overall series winning percentage was identical in the WHL playoffs. The team with the better regular season Fenwick had 12 series wins compared to only three losses:
Once again breaking that information down game by game, the numbers weren’t quite as impressive as 2013-14. With that being said, the team with the higher regular season Fenwick number still won 62% of all WHL postseason games in 2013, going 48-29 overall.
Going back further, to 2011-12, we finally see the series winning percentage dip just a hair compared to 2012-13 and 2013-14. The only real difference was that Edmonton beat Portland in the WHL Championship Series, despite Portland having a slightly higher regular season Fenwick:
But breaking the 2011-12 playoffs down game-by-game, we see the highest individual game winning percentage out of the past three postseasons. The team with the higher Fenwick number in the regular season won a whopping 68% of all playoff games in 2012, winning 51 times and losing only 23 times.
Now we look at the three years at hand combined. This is what you get when you combine the playoff series winners as a whole:
Combining the three playoff years into game-by-game data, we get a record of 148-77 when simply choosing the team who had the higher regular season Fenwick. That’s nearly 66%.
So to recap, over the past three WHL postseasons:
- The team with the higher regular season Fenwick has won 77.7% of all series.
- The team with the higher regular season Fenwick has won 65.7% of all individual games.
Now that we have three full playoff seasons combined it provides a much safer sample size to draw basic conclusions from. Teams who get more shots than they give up tend to win more in the playoffs. That makes total sense when you are not just dealing with one-off situations, but extrapolate it over a full series. The team who has a recent history of generating more chances will give themselves a better chance to win games, and eventually a full series.
Keep that in mind when making your predictions for the fast-approaching 2014-15 WHL playoffs.
Thanks for reading.
(The Estimated Fenwick data used is courtesy of Josh Weissbock and can be found here)
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