Disclaimer: the graph is not actually fun.
I went back and looked at the Paul MacLean era and the associated percentages after that brutal loss to the Calgary Flames on Wednesday. I know an awful lot of time has been spent talking about the zero-point Alberta swing, and some of it justifiably so: those are two brutal hockey teams, and for a team supposedly in a playoff race, the Ottawa Senators don't exactly look the part.
A lot of time's going to be spent on this team's no-show coming out of the Olympic gate, but the stuff that plagued this team early on in the year is much more likely the stuff that's killing Ottawa's playoff chances right now.
Let's look at the past three years of shooting percentage and save percentage data, all game states. The rolling black line is the opposition's save percentage, or a mirror of Ottawa's shooting percentage. The rolling red line is Ottawa's save percentage, or a mirror of the opposition's shooting percentage.
Huh. Can anyone identify the brutal twenty, twenty-five game stretch in 2014? It's actually kind of nuts how disparate things are.
Funny thing is how getting the right side of the percentages for decent stretches in the previous two years probably keyed Ottawa's run into the post-season. Good teams win the possession battle and bad team's don't, but getting a stretch of favorable bounces can push a team over the hump -- and getting a stretch of unfavorable bounces can do just the opposite.
Anyways, yeah. That's a brutal stretch.
Enjoy the weekend.
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