The year of the cat
The best team in the Western Hockey League this past season is, without a doubt, the Regina Pats. It doesn’t matter whether they win the league championship and qualify for the Memorial Cup or lose in the first round of the playoffs to the Calgary Hitmen. They are still the best team in the league. Sorry, Prince George Cougars fans. But don’t despair. There is good news.
Numbers and statistical analysis continue to take over sports.
In hockey, players are now assessed through their Corsi number, which is their number of shot attempts compared to shot attempts against their team, while playing at even strength.
The value of statistics comes into play when there is a large sample size, so the more data, the better. A player’s Corsi over five games is of limited value but a player’s Corsi over an entire season offers a detailed snapshot of the player’s offensive and defensive abilities that is far more insightful than simply looking at goals and assists.
Relying on the numbers also informs both the casual and obsessed hockey fan who the best team in the Western Hockey League was this past season.
All of the teams in the league had 72 chances to win a game. Regina did it 52 times, the most of all the teams. Therefore, they are the best.
They are better than the Medicine Hat Tigers (51 wins), the Seattle Thunderbirds (46 wins) and both the Cougars and the Kelowna Rockets (45 wins).
Sports purists, including hockey fans, get so excited at playoff time, arguing that the pressure of playoffs decides which team is really the best. From a statistical standpoint, that’s just nonsense.
A seven-game playoff series is a tiny sample size compared to 72 games.
Even the team that will win the league championship will play only 28 games at most and will have won just 16 times.
That’s a larger sample but it’s still of far less significance than 72 games played over more than five months.
Sports fans and breathless announcers also like talking about teams that are hot and cold entering the playoffs. Regina starts the playoffs having won their last eight games in a row while both the Victoria Royals and the Brandon Wheat Kings are limping, having won just three times in their last 10.
The reality, however, is that winning and losing streaks have no bearing on a team’s future success, a fact players and coaches know all too well. Health at an individual and team level, preparation, confidence and work ethic wins games. How the team performed in a small fraction of games at the end of a long season has nothing to do with the wins and losses to come.
Put it another way. If someone flips a coin eight times in a row and it comes up heads, most people would argue that the next time just has to be tails because that streak can’t continue.
Using that same logic, most people should bet on Calgary to beat Regina on Friday night because the winning streak by the Pats can’t go on.
Yet the odds of the ninth coin flip being tails is the same as it was for the first eight tries – 50-50. The odds of the Pats winning for the ninth time in a row is somewhat better than 50-50 because the game Friday is in Regina (home advantage is a real and measured phenomena in all sports) and because the regular season numbers suggest Regina is simply a better hockey team than Calgary, who lost more games than they won this past regular season.
The illusion of hot and cold teams will also fall apart when the Cougars kick off their series against the Portland Winter Hawks on Friday night at CN Centre.
Both are hot, with Portland winning eight of their last 10 and Prince George seven.
Over the next week or so, however, one of those teams will win four times and one of them will lose four times. One winning streak will continue and one will come to an end, not because one of them went cold or stayed hot but simply because the two teams will play each other until one of them wins four times.
The cold, harsh numerical reality has the Cougars being one of 16 teams in the playoffs competing for a league championship and a berth in the Memorial Cup, the national final which features an even-worse way of deciding the Canadian champion than a seven-game series.
Yet there is comfort in those numbers for Cougars fans.
For the first time in their 23-year history in Prince George, the Cougars won the B.C. division. Although the Kelowna Rockets also won 45 games this season, the Cougars lost one fewer game in regulation time than Kelowna did. Therefore, the Cougars were the best WHL team in B.C. this past season.
Nothing that happens on the ice this spring can change that fact.
And nothing can change the fact a banner will finally hang in CN Centre in honour of that accomplishment.
— Managing editor Neil Godbout