History of teams making the playoffs based on results from the first 3-5 games

9 comments
  1. So the Oilers will be the first team to go 0-5 to start the season and win the cup. Fun

  2. Having one point is worse than having none. Having five points is better than having six. We love stats.

  3. While there is some wonkiness in the results do to low sample sizes, the overall trend is not surprising.

    Every team will likely have a really bad 5 to 10 game stretch in the season. Starting out with a bad 5 to 10 game stretch tends to eliminate your team’s margin of error at the start of the season, meaning any other 5 to 10 game bad stretch can eliminate you from playoff contention.

    At the same time, every team will likely have a really great 5 to 10 game stretch in the season. Starting out with a great 5 to 10 game stretch gives you a massive buffer for the remainder of the season. If you get to a point where you’ve started so strongly that you need little more than a 0.500 record for the remaining games to make the playoffs, odds of making the playoffs become really good.

  4. I’m mostly surprised at the 31 teams that started 3-0 and missed. Shows how long the season is (and the fact you can’t really make any meaningful conclusions from such a small set of data).

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