Merry August tidings to you all! I come bearing the gift of a new post and maybe a new discussion: is there a way to qualify whether a team is good, bad, or mediocre? I’ve been trying to develop a metric to gauge teams based on whether or not they are mediocre for a couple of years now. My method may not be perfect, but I think it’s pretty accurate and the results hopefully bear that out.
I guess the first place to start is by answering the question: what is mediocrity, and how does it relate to the NHL? Mediocrity is defined as the state of being of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance. In the NHL, good teams are successful during the regular season and playoffs, while bad teams are…the opposite of that. Since the inception of the salary cap, there has been a tendency for bad teams to eventually become good by virtue of the Entry Draft; that is, drafting high quality prospects and seeing them mature and become highly productive players within in a few years. Conversely, good teams eventually degrade as their productive players continue to mature and age themselves out of productivity, or perhaps the pressures of the salary cap force teams to part with quality players.
The goal of this project was to identify the mediocre teams: teams that are stuck in between for one reason or another. A team that is mediocre is often in a challenging spot. You’ll see that there’s a wide range of mediocrity in the NHL. On one end of the spectrum, you have teams that make the playoffs with varying regularity, but fairly consistently make it no further than the first or second round, and as a result these teams draft mediocre prospects or sometimes trade their most valuable first round picks by the trade deadline in exchange for a rental that moves the needle somewhat but not enough. On the other end of the spectrum you have teams that are all over the map: they may make the conference finals one year and draft in the top ten another year, but for the most part they are lingering around neither getting better nor worse. That last point is the problem: winning the Cup in the salary cap era has often required teams to go through stretches of failure to build up a raft of talented prospects that will eventually lift them into a stretch of success.
So, my methodology. I used a point system to score each team on a variety of factors over the last five seasons, relating to regular season and postseason performance as well as drafting. The closer to zero points a team is, the more mediocre a team is. Here’s the breakdown of the factors and the points given:
| Five year winning percentage average | +2 for top 6, +1 for next 6, 0 for middle 8, -1 for next 6, -2 for bottom six |
| Three year winning percentage average | +2 for top 6, +1 for next 6, 0 for middle 8, -1 for next 6, -2 for bottom six |
| Is 3yr winning% less than 5yr winning%? | If yes, -1 |
| Five year playoff appearances | +2 for 4 or 5, +1 for 2 or 3, 0 for 0 or 1 |
| Three year playoff appearances | +1 for 2 or 3, 0 for 0 or 1 |
| Conference Finals appearances in the last five years | +1 for each |
| Stanley Cup Finals appearances in the last five years | +1 for each |
| Draft picks in the 6-10 overall range in the last five years | -1 for each |
| Draft picks in the 4-5 overall range in the last five years | -2 for each |
| Draft picks in the 1-3 overall range in the last five years | -3 for each |
So, without further ado, here are The Good, The Bad, and The Mediocre heading into the 2022-23 season.
The Good: Tampa Bay (+13), Vegas (+9), Boston (+9),
Washington (+8), Colorado (+7), Toronto (+7), St. Louis (+7)
Eight of the last ten Stanley Cup Finalists and all five Stanley Cup champions are here, as well as all four teams which ranked in the top six for both three year and five year regular season average winning percentages. All but one of these teams have made the playoffs in each of the last three seasons, and only two of these teams have missed one of the last five postseasons. Only one of these teams has had a draft pick in the top ten over the last five seasons (Colorado drafted defenseman Bowen Byram fourth overall in 2019). Finally, only one of these teams are showing signs of regressing over the past three years (“Is 3yr winning% less than 5yr winning%?”), and that’s the Tampa Bay Lightning. I guess it’s hard to maintain a ~70% winning percentage!
The (Positively) Mediocre: Pittsburgh (+6), Florida (+5), Carolina (+4),
Minnesota (+4), Dallas (+4), NY Islanders (+4), Edmonton (+3)
The (Negatively) Mediocre: Nashville (+3), Winnipeg (+2), Calgary (+1), Philadelphia (-2),
San Jose (-2), Vancouver (-3), NY Rangers (-4), Columbus (-4), Montreal (-5)
As implied by the titles, there are two groups of Mediocre teams: Positive and Negative. The main point of division is that question, “Is 3yr winning% less than 5yr winning%?” None of the Positively Mediocre teams listed here have seen their regular season winning percentage regress over the last three years, whereas all but two of the teams that are Negatively Mediocre (the Rangers and Columbus) have seen their regular season winning percentage go down. On that note, Pittsburgh, Florida, and Carolina are the remaining three teams to rank in the top six of either five year or three year regular season winning percentage. In terms of the playoffs, there is a near-even distribution of Conference Finalists (5 Positive, 4 Negative) and exactly one Stanley Cup Finalist for each group (Dallas in the Positive, Montreal in the Negative).
The other main difference between these two groups is how they have drafted. On the Positive side, just three teams (Carolina, Minnesota, and Edmonton) have drafted in the top ten in the last five years, while there have been twelve top ten draft picks made amongst the Negative group, with only two teams from that cohort (Nashville and Calgary) not making any top ten picks in the last five years. Perhaps not coincidentally, two of the teams in the Negative group to draft in the top three (the Rangers and Montreal) have been Conference Finalists, and in fact they have both had two top three picks over the last five years. Those high draft picks are thus responsible for their negative scores, but perhaps in the next five years their scores will trend upwards.
The Bad: Los Angeles (-8), Chicago (-8), Seattle (-9), Arizona (-10),
Anaheim (-10), Detroit (-11), Ottawa (-12), Buffalo (-12), New Jersey (-14)
All of these teams are bad for sure, and remarkably all but two of them (Ottawa and Buffalo) have gotten worse over the last few seasons, although the regression is fairly minimal for most teams (Anaheim and New Jersey seeing the biggest drops). Four of these teams (Los Angeles, Chicago, Arizona, and New Jersey) have made at least one playoff appearance, with only LA and Arizona doing so in the last three years. On the opposite side of the discussion, every team (save Seattle, for obvious reasons) has drafted at least three top ten picks over the last five years.
Some broader observations:
- The two most mediocre teams in the NHL are Calgary and Philadelphia. Acceptable!
- There are 14 teams on the positive end of the spectrum and 18 teams which are negative. The negative teams averaging a worse score than the positive teams averaging a positive score is noteworthy. Basically all the bad teams have spent much of the past five seasons being bad, and that’s a good thing for their prospects in the near future.
- Meanwhile, Tampa Bay has been bogarting the success in the League and not only does their score bear that out but also the considerable drop-off from them to the next two teams. It’s been Tampa Bay then everyone else for the last few years.
- If you go by total score and not my somewhat arbitrary categorizations, there are 17 positive teams and 15 negative teams. Almost had symmetry!
- Additionally, the best team (Tampa Bay) and the worst team (New Jersey) having one point of difference in their absolute values…almost had symmetry again!
- Here’s one piece of symmetry: the last two expansion teams, Vegas and Seattle, have the same absolute value in points of nine.
As far as the Penguins go, it is disappointing but not surprising to see them just miss the cut of good teams. In fact, if you go look at the raw data, Pittsburgh’s three year winning percentage was actually higher than their five year, but they were pushed out of the good group by virtue of Florida and Carolina trending up and past the Penguins (and Washington) in their three year winning percentages. That, and not making any deeper playoff runs than the first round, is what dropped Pittsburgh into the Positively Mediocre group. I’m afraid things will not improve for the Penguins in this regard.
So, there it is! What do you think?