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

“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.

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 11^th. 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.