Like (probably) many of you, I was getting ready to turn the game off once the Pens went up 2-0 in the shootout last night. I stayed to witness the inevitable loss only to see the Caps pull off the huge comeback. This got me thinking, just how rare is it to come back from a 0-2 deficit in the shootout.

I don't really have time to go through the actual numbers, so I'll just put up some probability numbers to get some insight at how special last night's win was.

The only way to go down 2-0 and still have a chance to come back is if the opponents go first, score on their first 2 tries, and you miss your first one. You then have to score your last 2 attempts and for the opponents to miss theirs. That ties it. It's then a toss-up between the 2 teams.

Probability-wise, taking into account league average (I took 33%), that works out to:

0.33*0.33*0.67*0.5=0.036

So you only come back 3.6% of the times you get down 2-0.

We can then see the probability to actually go down 2-0

0.33*0.67*0.33=0.073

So in any given shootout, there's a 7.3% the team that goes first grabs a 2-0 lead.

Putting these 2 numbers together:

0.036*0.073=0.00266

So for any given shootout, there's a 0.266% chance of witnessing the comeback we witnessed yesterday.

Now there were 159 shootouts last year. If we estimate this is pretty much the same number every year, this means there's been in all (4.8 seasons played roughly)

159*4.8=763 shhotouts played.

If the law of large numbers holds up, and there's no reason it shouldn't, that means that since the shootout, there's been about

763*0.00266=2 games where a team trailed 2-0 and came back to win. Which means the Caps game actually has a good chance of being the first time this has actually ever happened.

Now if someone has the time or an easy way to find out the real number, we can check if these numbers actually correpsond to the reality. Me I'll stick to irrelevant probabilities.

From nerdy-town, that's it.

Disclaimer: As a recent Caps fan, and rare hockey watcher outside of Caps games, there might have been another 0-2 comeback in recent weeks, in which case I'll hide and feel shame.

Writer's note: this topic was touched on in another blog with JP linking to it a few days ago. I tried to go a bit further with my analysis, so I think it's not redundant.

We've all heard it before. We've all tried to dismiss it as a lame attempt to undermine the Caps' accomplishments this season:

The Caps feast on a weak Southeast Division.

As much as we try to ignore this, it keeps creeping up during conversations, sports radio, blogs, and televised games. On the Pens forecast last Thursday, they were pushing pretty hard with this.

So today I'll try to take a look at the validity of this claim, attempting to remain as impartial as possible.

In the spirit of the Rink, I'll use some number crunching goodness, and hope to come up with some interesting insight.

The basic premise of this criticism is simple: The Southeast stinks, the Caps play more games against them, that's how they rack up the points.

So we'll break it down in 2 parts:

1. Does the Southeast really stink?

2. What kind of advantage do the Caps get by playing in the SE?

A little reminder on the NHL schedule: each team plays 6 times against each team in its own division, 4 times against each team in the other 2 divisions in its conference, and 18 times total against the other conference: 6*4+4*5*2+18=82

Continue reading this post »

Hello everyone,

The season inching ever closer, I wanted to know if anyone here lived in Europe, and if so, how did they get their hockey fix?

I bought last year the espn360 package which included pretty much every game, on the internet.

This had 2 flaws (apart from it not being cheap): the quality of the games was not very good, and when I get the opportunity to watch a game on TV, then I understand what crap I normally watch through internet (and even more if it's in HD). Also, these guys are pretty much incompetent, and last year I missed Game 2 against the Rangers because they messed up their scheduling and had it at 7AM when it was on at 7PM (French time). I don't want this happening this year.

So if anyone has some good advice on how to watch live hockey in Europe (I live in Paris), please reply.

Thanks,