How much does ‘peaking late’ lead to deep Stanley Cup playoff runs?

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“They peaked at the right time.” We’ve heard that expression used to describe late-blooming Stanley Cup playoff juggernauts for years. The 2018-19 St. Louis Blues are the ultimate example: last place in early January, second-half turnaround, best record in the league over their final 10 games, eventual champions.

Like the beer-bellied, balding former starting quarterback trudging into his high-school reunion, you don’t want to peak early, right?

If you’ve followed my work long enough, you’ll know I enjoy challenging hockey adages to see if they ring true when we dig in to the data. Are the 2018-19 Blues the norm or the exception? How much does it matter to play your best hockey in the stretch run of a season?

On one hand, it’s hard to compare the data from every team and every season without understanding the subjective situations. The 2014-15 Chicago Blackhawks, for instance, struggled down the stretch because their superstar Patrick Kane was out with a broken collarbone. He returned for Game 1 of the postseason, and Chicago was off and running to a third Cup in a five-year stretch. Also, teams that clinch playoffs spots early often have the luxury of load-managing their top players, which can lead to a dip in team performance in meaningless games.

I counter that notion with: The data still matter in that context, too. Whether a contending team is legitimately struggling with a full-strength roster or simply dulling its senses with games that don’t impact the standings, how either scenario translates to playoff performance is meaningful information.

So if we look at teams that made deep playoff runs in the past 10 postseasons, how many of them performed well in the final 10 games of the regular season? I’ll define “deep” as being one of the final four teams standing in a given year.

For the sake of this exercise, I’m discounting the 2019-20 season, because teams went more than four months between playing regular-season and playoff games due to the pandemic, so the connection between late-season performance and playoff fate obviously was very different. I replaced 2019-20 with 2011-12 to give us a proper 10-season sample.

Here’s how the conference finalists of the past 10 (non-bubble) seasons fared in their final 10 regular-season games. To avoid falling into the “good teams win, Captain Obvious” trap, I’ll include the teams’ full-season season ranks in the standings too, as we need to see if overall season performance correlates stronger to deep playoff runs than peaking late.

Season Team Final 10 games Rank Full season
2011-12 Los Angeles* .650 8th 13th
2011-12 New Jersey .750 3rd 9th
2011-12 Phoenix .800 2nd 11th
2011-12 NY Rangers .600 11th 3rd
2012-13 Chicago* .750 4th 1st
2012-13 Boston .400 24th 5th
2012-13 Los Angeles .600 10th 7th
2012-13 Pittsburgh .800 2nd 2nd
2013-14 Los Angeles* .600 14th 9th
2013-14 NY Rangers .700 6th 12th
2013-14 Chicago .500 22nd 7th
2013-14 Montreal .750 4th 10th
2014-15 Chicago* .400 25th 7th
2014-15 Tampa Bay .650 5th 5th
2014-15 NY Rangers .700 2nd 1st
2014-15 Anaheim .600 13th 3rd
2015-16 Pittsburgh* .800 1st 4th
2015-16 San Jose .500 15th 11th
2015-16 Tampa Bay .500 15th 12th
2015-16 St. Louis .800 1st 3rd
2016-17 Pittsburgh* .500 16th 2nd
2016-17 Nashville .550 13th 16th
2016-17 Ottawa .500 16th 12th
2016-17 Anaheim .900 1st 6th
2017-18 Washington* .800 3rd 6th
2017-18 Vegas .600 11th 5th
2017-18 Tampa Bay .550 15th 3rd
2017-18 Winnipeg .900 1st 2nd
2018-19 St. Louis* .850 1st 11th
2018-19 Boston .600 13th 3rd
2018-19 San Jose .350 28th 6th
2018-19 Carolina .600 13th 12th
2019-20 Tampa Bay* .350 27th 4th
2019-20 Dallas .400 25th 10th
2019-20 NY Islanders .400 26th 15th
2019-20 Vegas .800 3rd 7th
2020-21 Tampa Bay* .650 11th 9th
2020-21 Montreal .500 17th 18th
2020-21 NY Islanders .450 20th 12th
2020-21 Vegas .700 9th 1st
2021-22 Colorado* .450 21st 2nd
2021-22 Tampa Bay .700 7th 7th
2021-22 Edmonton .750 3rd 11th
2021-22 NY Rangers .600 12th 8th

Noteworthy findings

– The average points percentage of the past 40 conference finalists over their final 10 regular-season games was .634. Their average rank in the standings over their final 10 games was 11th. Their average rank in the full-season standings, however, was even higher at seventh.

– 37.5% of the conference finalists had top-five records in the league over their final 10 games; 37.5% had top-five full-season records. 47.5% had top-10 records over their final 10 games; 70% had top-10 records in the full season.  

– Only 12.5% had bottom-10 records over their final 10 games, and just five of the past 40 conference finalists were even below .500 over their final 10 games.

Conclusion

It doesn’t seem to be absolutely imperative for you to obliterate your competition like the 2018-19 Blues and be the best team in the NHL down the stretch, but the vast majority of conference finalists were at least decent teams down the stretch, with 87.5% playing at least .500 hockey. That tells us you ideally don’t want to be bad in your final games of the season. However, the correlation is clearly stronger between being a good team all season and making a deep playoff run.

So while the late-season surge is a fun narrative, it’s not as consistently as important as being a strong team wire to wire. Peaking late? We’ll call it slightly overrated but also not a bad thing to do.





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