Lessons can be learned from a Game 1 blowout

Travis Yost

Follow| Archive

The 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs opened in mostly one-sided fashion on Monday night. The Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers played the lone competitive game, with the other three contests ending in decisive, lopsided scores.

The Carolina Hurricanes started the party with a 5-1 victory over the Boston Bruins, relying on the same relentless pace of play that saw them outscore the Bruins 16-1 over the course of three regular-season meetings.

If Carolina looked great, there isn’t a strong enough descriptor for what the Toronto Maple Leafs did to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Sheldon Keefe’s team skated to a 5-0 victory over the two-time defending champions in a game where goaltender Jack Campbell had to stop just 24 shots.

Later in the evening, the St. Louis Blues stole home ice from the Minnesota Wild, with Dean Evason’s team four goals underwater to open their series.

Whenever you have such one-sided results in the opening game of a series, opinions can verge towards the extremes. Neither the Bruins nor the Lightning looked like they were in the same class as their opponents, yet we know all four teams are similarly talented, based on regular-season performance.

So, an interesting question arises: Can we draw anything from blowouts in the opener of a given series? Is it predictive of future results in the series, or merely just a volatile single-game outcome?

The short answer is that it matters. Looking back on playoff results from 2007-21, you can see that the bigger the score differential in Game 1, the higher the likelihood of a high score differential in Game 2.

Teams that thump their opponents in the opening game (agnostic to home ice here for a moment) won Game 2 by an average of +0.55 goals and won Game 2 60 per cent of the time. Also of note, close opening games were very suggestive of close Game 2 outcomes – teams that lost by a goal in the opener were actually more likely to win Game 2 than their opponents, which goes to the theory that big goal differentials are, to some degree, suggestive of talent and performance disparities across the two teams.

If you are a Maple Leafs, Blues, or Hurricanes fan, that’s music to your ears. And winning Game 2 60 per cent of the time on a +0.55 average margin of victory is a decisive advantage in a lower-scoring league like the NHL.

But ultimately, we are just talking about two games here. Knowing (a) the average length of series; and (b) the impact of home ice, we must look further to understand what series openers can tell us.

Let’s expand this analysis out. Taking the same approach based on Game 1 outcomes, what did it suggest for the rest of the series rather than just Game 2? Do the same trends apply?

The short answer is yes, and significantly so. Winning the first game in and of itself creates a considerable series advantage – such is life when you have to win just three of the next six games, versus your opponent having to win four of the next six.

But you can see the difference between the teams blowing out their opponents in Game 1 versus teams that may win by a smaller margin. A team winning in blowout fashion in Game 1 is advancing out of that series 80 per cent of the time, whereas a team winning Game 1 in closer fashion is advancing about 65 per cent of the time. The opposite relationship of course holds true: teams that lose close in Game 1 are much more alive than their blowout loss counterparts.

So yes, these decisive Game 1 outcomes are already telling us something. Think of it this way: there is a 65 per cent chance two of the Hurricanes, Leafs and Blues will advance out of the first round, and a 52 per cent chance that all three teams will eventually win this series.

As for the Kings and Oilers? Prepare for a lengthier fight.

Data via Evolving Hockey, NHL.com, Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference