Your First Round Results

Everything is going to be okay. I have a large bowl of ice cream in front of me. I'll have something on the end of the Penguins season sometime tomorrow. But for now, here are the your first round, and what a hell of a round it was, results.

Keeping 'Em Honest

I have something of an obsession with keeping score of everything. Counting the amount stoplights I hit on my way to work, or the amount of tiles there are on the floor. I quantify anything I come across.I justified the purchase of my expensive running shoes by figuring I had only paid about 13 cents a mile.

Clearly I am not all right in the head.

That, teamed with my love of hockey, is what brings us to another post-season trying to keep the experts honest.

Every year anyone with a soapbox to stand on makes their play-off predictions. And I do, as well. It's fun and it gives us a rooting interest in some series that we might be torn on. However, because of my pathological need to know the score, I like to put together a chart like the one below. That way when my picks perform better than anyone who makes a living doing this, I can celebrate and tell myself how awesome I am. 

click image to see full-size

As is usually the case, I'll probably add to this list as I stumble upon other predictions. It is currently short many voices from TSN, but only because they must have the common sense to not publish their predictions on the internet to be remembered forever. I wish I had the same discretion when, in an early season panic, I tweeted that the horrible Penguins defense would allow 260 goals this season.

Predicting the Playoffs is Simple

With the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs kicking off tomorrow, many people are sitting down with a pencil and a bracket today, myself included. And as I make my best Nostradamus impression, I keep telling myself those pieces of advice we tend to repeat in these times. That defense wins championships. That the Sharks will choke. That it’s about the match-up not the seed. That the seed is meaningless.

Well, that isn’t entire true. The Sharks part is, but the seeds aren’t exactly meaningless. They just aren’t all that great either. Over the last 4 post seasons the higher seed has only won 36 of the 60 matchups, or 60%. Hardly impressive.

But what if there was a statistic just sitting out there that was more accurate in predicting series winners? Even more accurate than a particular crab-eating macaque monkey?

It turns out – there is. Considerably more accurate.

Like how about going 50-10 over the same last 4 postseasons?

83.3%.

That’s only missing 16.7% of the time. You cannot even get dentists to agree on a toothpaste with that kind of consistency.

How about correctly predicting 15 of the last 24 upsets?

How about going a near perfect 14-1 in 2008?

Maybe you know about Simple Ranking System, even if you aren’t quite sure how it works. I doubt you were aware of how spot-on it has been predicting postseason series winners.

SIMPLE RANKING SYSTEM

Who exactly concocted SRS is unknown, but Doug from Pro-Football-Reference introduced it to a wider audience almost five years ago in a blog post.

Despite its name, even in a 16 game NFL season it isn’t that simple to figure out. An 82 game NHL season is even more complex. Luckily since its growth in popularity in the stat-heads world it has spread to other sports and a sister site at the Sports Reference Network, Hockey-Reference.

Doug does a better job explaining it, but it works like this:

If the Penguins are playing the Lightning, who normally allow 2.85 goals per game, and the Penguins score 3 times, they are +.15 (3-2.85).

If the Penguins allow 2 goals in the same game, when the Lightning are averaging 2.94 goals per game, the Penguins are another +.94 (2.94-2).

So on the game they are +1.09.

Over the course of the season you do this for every game and average them for a team’s overall SRS rating.

Essentially it judges how a team does factoring in how they are expected to do. Something like grading each game performance on a curve based on the competition.

What caught my eye, as I looked for a leg up in the yearly email playoff pick ‘em I do with my buddies, was the Flyers SRS last regular season. For a 7^th seed, it was high. Second highest in the East.

It got me thinking just how well SRS did at predicted playoff series. And as it turns out, pretty damn well.

All SRS ratings come from the wonderful people at Hockey-Reference. They are awesome.

2010

SRS went 12-3 during the post-season, outperforming seeding which was an unimpressive 8-7. It predicted 4 of the 7 upsets, including Philadelphia’s first round upset of the 2^nd seed Devils and their 2^nd round victory over the Bruins.

The highest SRS rating in the NHL belonged to your eventual Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhawks.

2009

The SRS ratings once again out-did seeding, 11-4 to 9-6.

SRS correctly predicted each time a higher seed beat a lower seed, while also predicting 2 of the 6 upsets, including the Pittsburgh Penguins 7-game series winner over the Capitals.

The Penguins, who had the second highest SRS in the East, won the conference.

The Detroit Red Wings lead the West in SRS and won the conference.

2008

This was the year SRS ratings really nailed the bracket, going 14-1, predicting 5 of the 6 upsets. It also correctly predicted both Conference Champions, and the Stanley Cup Champion.

The higher seed was only 9-6.

2007

Once again it did a wonderful job predicting upsets, hitting 4 out of 5, and going 13-2, compared to seeding which was 10-5.

And once again it did magnificent job suggesting who would be competing for the cup in June.

The Ottawa Senators, who lead the East in SRS, won the conference. The Ducks, who were number 2 in the West, took the conference and the Cup.

2006

This by far was the worst showing for SRS. Which actually isn't all that surprising. I’ve written before about the once-in-a-generation bizarre 2005-06 season.

Left was right, up was down, all 4 top seeds in the West lost in the opening round and Jonathan Cheechoo, now a member of the Worcester Sharks of the AHL, won the Rocket Richard Trophy with 56 goals.

SRS correctly predicted only 2 of the 7 upsets, and merely match seedings, both going 8-7.

WHAT ABOUT 2011?

So what does this mean for this postseason? What does SRS project?

Well, nothing too drastic, save for the Rangers knocking off the top seed in the East, the Capitals, in the opening round.

Do I agree? Probably not (although it should be noted that obviously SRS has done a ridiculously better job than I have over the past couple years).

I understand it though. Despite the divide in points and seeds, the Capitals have only won a few more games than the Rangers. Their Goals For and Goals Allowed are actually quite similar. The biggest difference is that the Caps have lost in OT, picking up the extra points.

What SRS can’t see is the fact that Ryan Callahan won’t be suiting up for the New York.

Other than that, like many experts, SRS predicts the Vancouver Canucks to be your 2011 Stanley Cup Champs, with the Boston Bruins playing runner-up.

EAST

1^st Round

Rangers (8) over Capitals (1)

Flyers (2) over Sabres (7)

Bruins (3) over Canadiens (6)

Penguins (4) over Lighting (5)

2^nd Round

Flyers (2) over Rangers (8)

Bruins (3) over Penguins (4)

Conference Championship

Bruins (3) over Flyers (2)

WEST

1^st Round

Canucks (1) over Blackhawks (8)

Sharks (2) over Kings (7)

Red Wings (3) over Coyotes (6)

Predators (5) over Ducks (4)

2^nd Round

Canucks (1) over Predators (5)

Sharks (2) over Red Wings (3)

Conference Championship

Canucks (1) over Sharks (2)

STANLEY CUP FINAL

Canucks (W1) over Bruins (E3)

WHAT ABOUT THOSE SHARKS?

Have the Sharks choked these past few years? According to SRS, except their 2009 first round loss to the Ducks, not really. It predicted the Hawks beating them in the conference champions last season, their loss to the Stars in 2008, and their loss to the Red Wings* in 2007.

* Originally read "loss to the Predators". Thanks to M4ck for the correction.