Think of all the events that can affect an NHL team over the course of a season. A great player (or players) might sustain injuries that take a month or more to get better, teams can get hit by a flu-bug or perhaps a literal pandemic, you can have stretches against fully healthy or fully hurt opposing teams. You get lucky sometimes, and sometimes you don’t. Some nights you don’t get the calls. But over a large sample, it all comes out in the goal differential wash.
We all value different stats, and by this time of year, goal differential is the temple at which I worship to pick through which teams are legit and which are phony. (Yes, some teams made bigger deadline deals, and we have to see how those additions shake out, but in hockey adding a couple guys can only move the needle so much.)
It’s amazing what a truth-teller goal differential is. Going back five seasons to 2016-17, only two teams have been a minus in the category and made the Stanley Cup Playoffs (ignoring the weird play-in year). Only a handful have been plus in that category and missed. It’s a clear dividing line. Sort each conference by goal differential and teams that are a positive are usually in or around the playoff cut line, and the teams in red are in the bottom 16. Outliers either got robbed or got lucky.
So what can we learn about the NHL this season from goal differential? I’d argue for three obvious things straight away.
Think of all the events that can affect an NHL team over the course of a season. A great player (or players) might sustain injuries that take a month or more to get better, teams can get hit by a flu-bug or perhaps a literal pandemic, you can have stretches against fully healthy or fully hurt opposing teams. You get lucky sometimes, and sometimes you don’t. Some nights you don’t get the calls. But over a large sample, it all comes out in the goal differential wash.
We all value different stats, and by this time of year, goal differential is the temple at which I worship to pick through which teams are legit and which are phony. (Yes, some teams made bigger deadline deals, and we have to see how those additions shake out, but in hockey adding a couple guys can only move the needle so much.)
It’s amazing what a truth-teller goal differential is. Going back five seasons to 2016-17, only two teams have been a minus in the category and made the Stanley Cup Playoffs (ignoring the weird play-in year). Only a handful have been plus in that category and missed. It’s a clear dividing line. Sort each conference by goal differential and teams that are a positive are usually in or around the playoff cut line, and the teams in red are in the bottom 16. Outliers either got robbed or got lucky.
So what can we learn about the NHL this season from goal differential? I’d argue for three obvious things straight away.
1. SO MUCH FOR PARITY
We always hear about how the NHL loves and pushes for parity. They hand out a bonus point to teams that lose in OT so everyone feels like they’re in the playoff hunt all year long. The salary cap is supposed to keep the playing field fair. The worst teams get the best draft picks.
But not this year. This year there’s more disparity than there has been in years, and as Nick Kypreos has argued on our “Real Kyper and Bourne” podcast, this year there are basically two leagues. There’s the premier league and tier two, with a few teams kicking around the middle looking at relegation/fighting for promotion.
In 2019-20, when the league stopped for COVID, over a third of the NHL was within the range of plus-10 to minus-10, with another five teams not far off. It was rife with parity.
It was an absolute mess of OK teams. Those teams head-to-head was basically coin-toss hockey. This season, just five teams fall into that same range despite similar games played.