The underdog visitors outscored the home teams 20-6, leaving many previously fired up fans today with a very unsettling feeling…but should they be?
Over my many years covering, and many more watching, NHL playoff games I noticed a trend that was pretty undeniable. So last year I set up an actual study to determine if I was right. The trend I was noticing was that It felt like every time a team got blown out of a playoff game they would win the next game.
Why does this happen? I suppose there are many reasons for this but I believe the team that wins by more than three or four or five goals tends to let up enough to give the desperate team a window back in. Also the playoffs tend to be more about fear of losing than most would admit…Desperate teams give more effort and with these teams being so evenly matched that is often enough to turn the tide..
* Over the last ten seasons there were 1,043 playoff games. Only 84 of those games were a 4 goal or larger win. Almost exactly 8 percent. For the sake of argument here I am defining “blown out/ blow out” as win by 4 or more goals in a playoff game..
Here are some of my numbers from last year…
In the playoffs…
* 56% of the time a team is blown out the losing team bounced back to win the very next game.
* 44% of the games following a blowout are 1 goal games.
* 20% of the time the next game heads to overtime.
* In the 17 instances that that a team blew out another team team to set up a chance top eliminate that team the team facing elimination won 12.
If a team loses by 5 or more games?
In 44% of the 34 times this has happened the team that just lost by 5 or more goals actually WINS the next game.
We saw this last year when Toronto took game 1 of the Tampa series 5-0 and Tampa won the next game and went on to win the series…
So tonight and tomorrow you might want to bet Florida, Toronto, NJ, and Vegas….
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