For years now the NHL has felt like a league of parity. A league where on any given night, any team can beat any other team...until this year. This year the NHL is taking a very strange shift of sorts into a league of good teams and not-so-good teams. We are seeing the kinds of differentials in goals scored and goals allowed that we haven’t seen in years.
Yes, I know it is early, but it isn’t just about stats. I have watched more games this year where one team just looked like they were completely outclassing the other team. The Sharks have scored 39 goals in 8 games and the Flyers have scored 11 goals in 8 games. The Bruins have given up 10 goals in 7 games and the Rangers have given up 29 goals in 7 games.
We are only about 8 games in and there are already 7 teams (San Jose, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Toronto, St Louis and Boston) who have scored 8 or more goals than they have allowed and 7 teams who have allowed 8 more goals than they have scored.
So it got me thinking about what was happening and if this has been a trend coming for some years now. So I looked at the top 8 teams this year and the bottom 8 teams this year:
The Top 8 teams have played 61 games and are a combined 47-12-2(96).
That is a .787 winning percentage.
The Bottom 8 teams have played 67 games and are 16-46-5 (37).
That is a .276 winning percentage.
So the best of the NHL are .511 better than the worst early in this season.
So I went back a year and tried to find the equivalent dates in the schedules....where the top 8 have played roughly 61 games and the bottom 8 had played roughly 67...last year of course this date fell on February 2th and 5th respectively.
2012-13
The top 8: 63GP 47-10-6 100pts .797 winning percentage
The bottom 8: 68GP 24-41-3 51pts .375 winning percentage
Top was: .422% Better
2011-12
The top 8: 62GP 45-12-5 95 pts .766 winning percentage
The bottom 8: 67GP 20-39-8 48 pts .358 winning percentage
Top was: .408% Better
2010-2011
The top 8: 63GP 38-16-9 85pts .674 winning percentage
The bottom 8: 67GP 22-36-9 53 pts .395 winning percentage
Top was: .279% Better
2009-2010:
The top 8: 62GP 41-14-7 89 pts .717 winning percentage
The bottom 8: 66GP 22-35-9 53pts .401 winning percentage
Top was: .316% Better
2008-2009
The top 8: 61GP 43-10-8 94 pts .770 winning percentage
The bottom 8: 68GP 19-39-10 48pts .352 winning percentage
Top was: .418% Better
2007-2008
The top 8: 63GP 44-14-5 93 pts .738 winning percentage
The bottom 8: 68GP 22-44-2 46 pts .338 winning percentage
Top was: .400% Better
So to sum it up...If you are looking at the record over the start of the NHL seasons over the last 7 years.....
The top 8 may be trending a little better:
'07-08: .738%
'08-09: .770%
'09-10: .717%
'10-11: .674%
'11-12: .766%
'12-13: .797%
'13-14: .787%
While, the bottom 8 may be getting a little worse:
'07-08: .388%
'08-09: .352%
'09-10: .401%
'10-11: .395%
'11-12: .358%
'12-13: .375%
'13-14: .276%
However, the gap between top and bottom, was decreasing from 07-08 until 10-11 and since has rather dramatically increased:
'07-08: .400%
'08-09: .418%
'09-10: .316%
'10-11: .279%
'11-12: .408%
'12-13: .422%
'13-14: .511%
But that is really not why I started all this crazy research...
It started with...it’s not just that the top teams are winning more, they are winning convincingly, at least it felt that way...
So I set out to see if that was just my perception or if the numbers would bare that out, so while collecting the wins and losses I also collected the goal differentials:
Top 8 teams combined goal differentials for the same time period shows the top teams are very much out-scoring their opponents more and more since '10-11
'07-08: +69
'08-09: +54
'09-10: +66
'10-11: +29
'11-12: +39
'12-13: +61
'13-14: +75
And when you look at the bottom 8 teams the Goals allowed differential is growing by leaps and bounds as well:
'07-08: -63
'08-09: -38
'09-10: -82
'10-11: -38
'11-12: -40
'12-13: -59
'13-14: -89
Finally the disparity in Goal differential over the last 4 years early in the seasons you can most clearly see the widening gap:
'10-11: 67 goals
'11-12: 79 goals
'12-13: 120 goals
'13-14: 164 goals
So it’s right about now that I wish I had been better at math, and I wish I knew how to display this in some sort of fancy, embed graph...but I am not, and I don’t..
There are many of you out there who understand and can decipher stats way better than I can. While i know it to be a small scale, and only relatign to the starts of the NHL season (roughly each team's first 8 games or so, there is a definite rise in the differential...but beyond that... just watching several games a night you can see a growing difference in the talent levels from team to team.. I, like many of you, have been watching hockey since the dynasties of the 70s and 80s through the mind-numbing parity of the late 90s and the millenium...since 2010 it feels different.
I guess I can more feel this shift than prove it on a small sample size.
but enough from me!
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