Magic Number Thread!

[Froggy]

There is no such thing as the president's trophy curse. Since 1980, the top overall team has won the cup like 27% of the time. 16 teams make the playoffs, so that's a 6.3% chance per team. The top team is 4X more likely to win the cup than random chance would dictate. not a curse.

[skullman80]

Agree with froggy.

[Froggy]

Agree with froggy.

I'm too lazy to look this up on my phone, but when you look at 1st overall in either conference, you're probably gonna be somewhere around 35-40%

[PensFanInDC]

See of you can answer this question without looking it up:

Out of the last ten Presidents Cup Throphy winners, how many went on to win the Stanley Cup?

Detroit in 08

I talked about this a few years ago on this board and someone made a good counter point to mine. The info I found said that about 40% of all president trophy winners won the cup. I thought this meant that the advantage went to the non-winner but when you extrapolate to consider that 16 teams make the playoffs so 1 team wins 40% of the time and any of the other 15 teams wins 60% of the time. So technically winning the trophy tends to lean toward winning to cup.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/feature/?id=5549

[Froggy]

In fairness, that % is trending way down since the 04 lockout. Still, not enough data to indicate anything.

[tfrizz]

A win against the Bruins tomorrow night secures #1 in the East.

And ANY kind of win to boot. Reg, OT, or SO.

Yup. I was going to specify that, but decided not to.

[newarenanow]

There is no such thing as the president's trophy curse. Since 1980, the top overall team has won the cup like 27% of the time. 16 teams make the playoffs, so that's a 6.3% chance per team. The top team is 4X more likely to win the cup than random chance would dictate. not a curse.

[JeffDFD]

Conference MN = 0

[viva la ben]

Cant wait until the Pens get to raise one of their own!

[malksby8771]

/End thread.

[Sam's Drunk Dog]

Once the playoffs begin the only magic number that matters is first to 16.

[relantel]

hmm. Would take Pens winning out, and the Hawks going no better than 1-2-1 to close their season, but still alive for the President's trophy... (Pens at 31 ROW, CHI 28, with their max at 32, so two pens wins would clinch the ROW tiebreaker - for any scenario involving the Hawks finishing with 76 points would require the Pens to own the ROW tiebreaker in the process)

In other news, the Pens clinched over Anaheim yesterday, should it make a difference come SCF if both get that far.

[relantel]

* it is far more likely that Pens finish the season with the most ROWs but won't catch the Hawks in points. Which is ok by me. At this point, I'd like the Pens to finish the season with that 0 still in the third column, just for the novelty of it.

[Henry Hank]

There is no such thing as the president's trophy curse. Since 1980, the top overall team has won the cup like 27% of the time. 16 teams make the playoffs, so that's a 6.3% chance per team. The top team is 4X more likely to win the cup than random chance would dictate. not a curse.

Yuuuuuup. For some reason, the fact that the President's Trophy isn't an automatic Cup win has lead to some weird belief that you don't want to finish on top. I remember looking at the numbers a couple years ago and basically it was pretty clear over the last 20+ years that your chances of winning the Cup are much better the higher your seed is. Certainly, finishing first in the regular season guarantees nothing, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone if the Pens don't win the Cup. That would really suck if they don't, of course.

The Pens did good this year. It was frustrating the last few seasons to see them fall just short of the division and have to settle for a tougher 4-5 match-up in the first round. Glad to see they've set themselves up for a favorable run.

[Froggy]

i posted this on my facebook yesterday. it's a pretty interesting stat. Chicago is 1st in the league in goal differential with +53. The Pens are 2nd with +42. No one else is higher than +23. that's weird.

[pressure=9Pa]

Here's the new countdown:

[ExPatriatePen]

Is no one celebrating the fact that the Flyers were officially eliminated from the playoffs last night?

[BfromD]

^Go back a few pages. They were eliminated middle of last week (Thursday?). Now everyone has shifted to rooting for them to win out to hurt their draft position.

Edit: and "by back a few pages", I mean back a few pages in NPR in the "other NHL games" thread, if memory serves.

[beLIEve]

The thread that won't die. With Pittsburgh's win and Chicago's loss yesterday, the Pens magic number for the presidents trophy dropped all the way to 9. Chicago's magic number remains at 4.

Chicago still likely has it won with a remaining schedule of Edmonton Calgary St Louis, but the Pens are still technically in the hunt.

[relantel]

The thread that won't die. With Pittsburgh's win and Chicago's loss yesterday, the Pens magic number for the presidents trophy dropped all the way to 9. Chicago's magic number remains at 4.

Chicago still likely has it won with a remaining schedule of Edmonton Calgary St Louis, but the Pens are still technically in the hunt.

And last night's results clinched the ROW tiebreaker (32-28, Chi max 31) in the event Pens can tie the Hawks in points, as improbable as that scenario is.