The Actual Long Odds
May 1st, 2008, 4:56 pm
Warning: original research and numbers to follow. If you think sports bloggers don’t have anything to contribute to society, click away quickly!
We’ve heard the stat before, only twice in NHL history has a team come from 3-0 down to win the series. According to a new script I wrote that extracts the data from hockey-reference.com, the actual number of 3-0 series is 176, not 151 as reported by Mark Purdy. I’m going from 1939, the first year I found that had seven game series. Before that, they did all kinds of crazy things like playing two games with the winner being the team with the most goals combined. And there was a team called the Maroons. That’s just weird. Anyway, that means the real odds are 2/176, or 1.14%. If someone can explain this discrepancy, please email me or post a comment.
However, now we have more information- the 1.14% is no longer accurate because of the 176 series in NHL history, only 53 of them (30.1%) actually went to game 5. The other 69.9% series were a sweep. Also interesting:
- 11 (6.25%) went to game 6
- 5 (2.8%) went to game 7
But now we can operate knowing the series is 3-1. According to my research, which agrees with this page, there have been 20 teams that came back from a 3-1 deficit (including the two I mentioned above). The odds have gone up, now we’re at 20 out of 239, which is 8.4%. Now we’re into very long shot territory, instead of kiss-your-ass-goodbyetown. So how to these teams do going forward?
- 87 series went to game 6 (35.4%)
- 38 series went to game 7 (15.9%)
The question I’m trying to answer is, what are the historical chances the Sharks win game 5? If you want to operate as if the games are completely independent events, we use the latter section, which is about 1-in-3. If we think that previous occurrences in the series will affect the Sharks’ chances in game 6, then we’re only talking about 1-in-5 (11 out of 53). Other interesting notes:
- Home teams win about 58% of the time in the playoffs (1839 of 3178)
- The team that won game 4 wins game 5 only 47% of the time (203 of 432)
It’s just a gut feeling (and I’m a homer) but I think it’s more towards the upper number than the lower. So flip a coin twice for the Sharks, and if it comes up heads both times, the series will still be alive Saturday morning.
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Great analysis!! That’s better reporting than the Merc. 🙂
You give a room full of monkeys a room full of typewriters, sooner or later they will hit on something decent. This is my “best of times, blurst of times” moment.
This just in. 5.93 % chance Semenov yells “Brains” and then eats Steve Ott during the pregame skate.
Check this out, some dude posted it on hockeybuzz. It’s all about the 33 year connection. I’m not sure if it is accurate or not, but it’s hella funny:
– Brian Boucher (33) came to SJ from Philadelphia. Philadelphia won the SC in 1975, and beat the Islanders in the semis after the Islanders came back from 0-3 in the previous round.
– Sharks fell behind Dallas 3 games to 0 on 4/29. 4 + 29 = 33.
– The Sharks have 3 players who are 33 years old: Rivet, Grier, and Norton. Rivet (52) – Grier (25) + Norton (6) = 33.
– Brenden Morrow used Brian Campbell to knock Craig Rivet out in the 3rd period of game 3. Rivet (52) + Morrow (10) – Campbell (51) = 11. There were three players in that hit. 11 x 3 = 33.
– In Series 1 / Game 3 against Calgary, the Sharks lost after going up 3-0 at 3:33 with a goal from Douglas Murray (3). Murray, born March 12, 1980 (3+12+1+9+8+0=33) scored in his 3rd career playoff game on his 3rd shift of the night.
I just did a search for a ticket for tonight’s game thru ticketmaster (which, unfortunately, I cannot attend)…. 2 strange things occurred:
1) the only ticket available was seat 6 IN YOUR SECTION AND ROW, GUYS.
2) (1+2+4) + 20 = 27, seat 6 = 33.
Interesting stuff. But I think your timeframe makes the numbers misleading – and bend away from your favor.
From the looks of the 20 teams that recovered from being down 1-3, there is an upward trend starting in the 70s. 1 team; then 4 in the 80s; and 9 in the 90s. Makes this year ripe for maybe 3 such occurances. Unfortunately, the home team win % could be skewed by the timeframe – gut feeling says it’s much closer to 50% over the past 5-10 years.
Just don’t pull a Colorado in this one!
Good point, Jeremy, thanks. Here’s some info on series since 1980:
18/180(10%) came back from 3-1 to win.
69/180(38%) went to game 6
31/180(17.2%) went to game 7
Based on these numbers, I think I might revise my initial estimate that the Sharks have at least a 1 in 3 chance they win tonight. and probably closer to even money.
With 2 of the 3 lost games being lost in overtime, I think the odds should go up even higher.
WIN.
Wow. Those chances just skyrocketed with a shocking 3-2 win last night. I don’t know what the hell Dallas is doing