Who is primed to defy expectations in the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are upon us! The battle for the best trophy in all of sports gets underway this weekend when the St. Louis Blues take on the Winnipeg Jets.

How can we take a deeper look at the playoff field using only goals for and against?

In October, I wrote a piece about the teams that most and underperformed their underlying goal differential. 

Last season, there was evidence based on the regular season that the Rangers could falter early in the playoffs, both in advanced analytics and in the basic defensive vulnerability calculation I did at the beginning of this season. 

So which teams are the most likely to have an earlier than expected exit and who is most likely to make a deeper than expected run in the postseason. The key here is expectation. Just because the New Jersey Devils are the second biggest underperformer of the regular season doesn’t mean they have a great chance to win the Stanley Cup Final. They may be friskier than expected against the Hurricanes. 

The 3 largest regular season overperformers among playoff teams were:

• Minnesota Wild:

  • Wins: 5.96

  • Points: 10.32

• Toronto Maple Leafs:

  • Wins: 4.75

  • Points: 6.56

• Montreal Canadiens:

  • Wins: 1.92

  • Points: 6.06

The 2 largest regular season underperformers among playoff teams were:

• Tampa Bay Lightning:

  • 6 Wins

  • 9.8 Points

• New Jersey Devils

  • 2.56 Wins

  • 5.61 Points

The clear ends of the spectrum as the Wild and Lightning. The Wild have an uphill battle against the Vegas Golden Knights and the Lightning are slightly favored against the Florida Panthers. Of course there’s reason to believe that the Lightning’s luck will run out, given their goals above expected scored, which is an underlying metric that would make the Lightning look “unlucky” in this data set. 

At the end of day, every team has reasons for optimism and worry headed into the playoffs!