Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Index of Specialness

Think special teams matter? We did a little simple arithmetic, as illustrated in the table below. We just took the power play success rate for each team, added to that the penalty killing success rate, and created an "index of specialness:"


The "IoS" confirms what the intuitive reader already suspects -- special teams matter. Breaking the 30 teams into three ten-team segments, eight of the top ten in the IoS are in the playoff seeding, five of the next ten. Down there in the bottom third, only three teams are in the playoff mix as of this morning.

Just some doodling to occupy you while you're eating your Cap'n Crunch.

Thanks to James Mirtle, whose entry on special teams got us to doodling
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1 comment:

  1. JP9:38 AM

    This is why I think Carolina is somewhat lucky to be where they are in the standings, and I don't think it's sustainable - either their special teams need to get better or they're going to fall out of the playoff picture, imo.

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