Final check in on how each NHL team did in terms of clear victories, something I wrote about a few weeks ago and how it’s a good way to evaluate a team’s true talent level. From my last post:

One way to evaluate a team’s talent level is by looking into the number of clear victories they’ve posted. Clear Victories is a metric that Scott Reynolds analyzed and tracked over a decade ago over at The Copper & Blue and is defined as a win by two goals or more, excluding empty net goals. The key takeaway from Reynolds’ analysis is that clear victories were a better indicator of a team’s true talent level than the team’s overall record. And teams who more often win games by a larger margin tend to have better success in the future. Heading into the post-season this metric can really help identify the teams that have an edge over their competition and if any of the contenders might be considered outliers.

Clear Victories is defined as a win by two or more goals excluding empty net goals. One additional criterion is that the winning team has that goal differential of at least two with three minutes left in the game. This helps avoid the scenarios where an empty net goal is scored earlier in the period (as we know teams are pulling their goalies earlier), or when a penalty results in a goalie pull.

Included in the table below is each team’s Clear Victories Percentage (CV%), which is the number of clear victories divided by their total number of games, along with each team’s Clear Losses Percentage (CL%). I’ve also applied a basic heat map to each team’s points percentage and Clear Victories Percentage to see how teams compare with one another, and if there are teams who might be winning a lot but often by a smaller margin.

The Oilers had a great regular season, finishing with the ninth best points percentage. And 39.00 percent of their games were clear victories, which ranked sixth best in the league. Colorado (43.90), Winnipeg (43.90), Carolina (40.20), Florida (40.20) and Tampa Bay (40.20) were the top five teams for this metric. The league average clear victories percentage and the clear losses percentage was 29.9 percent.

What stands out for Edmonton is the percentage of their games were clear losses. Among the top end teams, in terms of results, Edmonton ranks fairly poorly and closer to league average levels with a clear loss percentage of 29.3 percent (15th in the league). The other contenders were excellent in limiting the frequency of clear losses.

We’ll see how this all correlates to playoff success.

A big thank you again to Ganesh Murdeshwar who was able to provide this data. It’s not readily available, so can’t thank him enough for his support.

Data: NHL.com, Natural Stat Trick

Related:

• Clear victories and what it means as the NHL playoffs approach – The SuperFan (2024, April 2)