How to Bring the Cup Back to Canada

If you look at the numbers, teams from Canada would have more than their rightful share of Cup victories if the Red Wings played on Canadian soil.

What’s clear from the last few years is that there are several models for winning the Stanley Cup: you can bottom out in the standings and hit a couple of excellent draft years (Anaheim, Pittsburgh), hunt for the unplucked gems and keep your best players for life (my Red Wings), or, uh, whatever it is the Hurricanes did in 2006. In each case, the core strategy needs to be coupled with key trades (see Pronger) or free-agent signings (see Brind’amour) and a whole steaming pile of luck, including not getting hurt.

Of course, the Canadian teams need to do these things too, and the lack of Stanley Cup since 1993 might mean they’re not doing enough of these things. But could it just be that we were spoiled by the freewheeling 1980s, and that Canadian teams aren’t actually doing that poorly? Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Let’s use as our baseline the period 1993-2010 inclusive, since that covers the Bettman era and happens to include the last Canadi[a/e]n Stanley Cup. If Canadian and U.S. teams are expected to be equally good, then over time Canadian teams should make the various rounds of the playoffs in proportion to their representation in the league. Eight of 26 NHL teams were Canadian in 1993-95, and seven of 26 were Canadian in 1996. The current six-team line-up has been around since 1997, of a total of 26 teams (1997-98), 27 (1999), 28 (2000), and 30 (2001-present). This translates into 22.7-per-cent Canadian teams for the entire period, keeping in mind The Year That Never Was.

How does that translate into expectations? In that span, there have been 272 teams in the first round, 136 in the second round, 68 conference finalists, 34 Stanley Cup finalists, and 17 champions. How does that compare with expectations?

We’ll start with the most depressing example. We’ve had one out of 17 champions over this span, when we should have had three or four (3.859, to be exact: 17 x 22.7 per cent). Of the 34 finalists, five were Canadian; indeed everyone except Toronto has made it over this span. But we should have had 7.718, so we’re behind the pace here too. In the conference finals, 11 teams were Canadian, against an expectation of 15.436; still not great. Things start to look up in the second round: 29 teams against an expectation of 30.872 is pretty close. And in the first round, 64 Canadian teams actually beats the expected count of 61.744.

With these numbers in hand, we can do some statistics* to see whether Canadian teams are really better or worse than their American counterparts. We can test against the binomial distribution to see how bad the observed number of Canadian teams at all stages of the playoffs (110 overall) compares with the expected value (119.42). When we do this, we get a P-value of 0.026 – a result that most scientists would take to mean that Canadian teams are doing worse.

So what’s the solution? I notice that the Wings have made the playoffs every year since 1993 (and beyond), and played in a total of 41 playoff rounds and won four cups over that time. Now we’re looking at 157 rounds against an expectation of 138 plus change, and a corresponding, much awesomer P-value of 0.0068 in the other direction. So if we declare Detroit to be Canadian soil (and why not? It’s * north * of Windsor), then our problem is solved.

• really questionable statistics, never mind that I probably miscounted somewhere along the way too.