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Displaying pretext
For objective hockey analysts, we sure talk about luck a lot. Yet in his annual NHL Review, Alan Ryder reminds us that “Wins are 94% predicted by goals for and against, marginal goals totals or goal differentials, ” suggesting that only the remaining 6% is luck.
And speaking of goals, they’re generated by getting into position to shoot, shooting, and the quality of the shot itself, each of which involve no luck, a little luck, and mostly luck, respectively. Overall, Gabriel Desjardins computed that 35% of a goal is luck.
Given these two findings it probably comes as no surprise that in a separate study, Desjardins, whose approach has been backed up by others like Tyler Dellow, discovered that 38% of winning percentage is luck.
If that’s true, there are obviously teams that are getting the lion’s share of that good fortune. For example, Alan Ryder has always defined a lucky team as one requiring comparatively few marginal goals for each point in the standings, like the 2006-07 Boston Bruins or 2007-08 New York Islanders, while an unlucky team requires far more marginal goals, like the 2006-07 NY Rangers or the 2008-09 Minnesota Wild. Of course, Ryder is focusing only on the 6% of winning that can’t be explained by goals. Is there a system that captures the other 32-35%?
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I can't remember who said it, but the fact alone that the NHL has been so low scoring certainly makes the 38% luck make sense to me (beyond the analysis, of course).