We have a clear playoff picture, now:  the Chicago Blackhawks, despite a losing control of their own playoff destiny on the last day of the regular season, have found their way into the 8th spot in the West after the Dallas Stars lost at Minnesota in the NHL's final regular season game.  This was undoubtedly extremely satisfying for most BtN enthusiasts, as we are well acquainted with the true strength of this Chicago team and the genuine mediocrity of the Stars, but what are Red Wings fans to make of it?  Going into the games on Sunday, there was no chance for Detroit to face Chicago in the first round, and they were already locked into the three seed, so it begs the question makes one wonder:  should Detroit have stuck their Western Conference adversaries with the Blackhawks to better their own chances, or was it in their best interest to try to let the Stars in?  Let's take a look.

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With homage to D'ohboy and his Pythagorean NHL Standings, I present an entirely different approach to describing a relationship between points and goals scored/allowed by taking advantage of a mathematically-centered concept that applies specifically to hockey.

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There's been a lot of clamor over luck recently:  what is it?; how does it manifest itself?; to what degree does it affect a game, a playoff series, a season?; how do we quantify it?  Some of those questions are irrelevant, but others carry great meaning to even the most casual fan (or should, anyway).  Some of those questions can't be answered directly using anything resembling this approach.  Regardless, I hope to shed a definitive quantitative light on the basics of NHL seasonal point variance.  Some people might not like my approach; if you are one of those people, I encourage you to follow the groundwork layed in this trio of articles by the brilliant Brian Burke at Advanced NFL Stats; he presents a different but equally valid approach to this that might be easier to swallow even if it's significantly more complicated.

My method is rather simple.  I assume the closing overtime-(and SO)-included line at Pinnacle Sports is the most accurate representation of a team's chance at winning a hockey game.  If you do not accept this, I cannot do much to help you believe it except urge you to put your money in play.  Closing lines, even early in the season, are remarkably efficient predictors on a game-by-game basis (barring, I don't know, an early in-game injury or a literally game-time scratch of a high-GVT player?).  Anyway, after converting the juiced lines to strict odds for all 1,230 games, I run a Monte Carlo simulation of the entire 2009-10 season 100,000 times.  The frequency of three point games is modeled linearly with respect to the maximum winning percentage for each game (R^2 of .91 or thereabouts).  The point distributions are collected, and as a bonus feature I also check division and conference position according to the 2009-10 tie-breaking procedures (goal differential is a little nastier and a lot more time-consuming to model, so any tie that came down to GD was decided at random).

There are a few caveats.  The final mean does not represent true team strength by any stretch:  teams suffer injuries, lineup changes, and especially differing schedules which will non-trivially affect the odds of winning any game.  Therefore I don't think the means are comparable, especially across conferences.  I really intended this to be a team-by-team study of luck to examine its wide-ranging effect on an NHL season.  Also, my means add up to about 28 points less than there actually were last year (2761 to 2733).  Take that as you will.  Now for the fun.

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