Stupid Stat of the Day Season Recap

This season, every “Stupid Stat of the Day” that I ran was something repeatable. A winning streak or a losing streak or a number of goals scored – things like that.

I haven’t always done that with the SSOTD. Previously, I’d use the Red Wings’ record under given circumstances or the total number of goals scored. Early this season, though, the SSOTDs were matching up against game results and I wanted to see how that would continue. Keeping in mind, of course, that these are not meant to be predictions.

It turned out that results were split almost evenly. The trend pointed out in the SSOTD continued in forty games this season and ended in 42 of them.

The stat was a “winless” situation for 36 games and an “unbeaten” one for 43 games, despite the fact that I got a decent number of comments on social media about never doing positive scenarios. There were also two SSOTDs about the number of goals scored (both of which held) and another about the Red Wings missing the playoffs when losing to the Blue Jackets in April (which also held, unfortunately).

Of the 36 games where the SSOTD was based on a negative outcome, 17 of those were followed by losses. Of the 43 SSOTDs reflecting on a win, twenty of those were matched with a win. So a loss-related stat was followed by a loss 47.2% of the time while a win-related stat was followed by a win 46.5% of the time.

That’s slightly funny because, as I mentioned, I took some flak for running negative stats but the Red Wings’s winning percentage when I ran a positive stat was actually slightly worse than their overall winning percentage on the season while their winning percentage on nights with a negative stat was slightly better.

If there actually was causation (again, repeatedly, there’s not), and if the percentage held, running negative stats all season would have resulted in two more wins. That alone wouldn’t have gotten Detroit into the playoffs but if those wins just happened to be against Boston on January 13 and March 21, it would have dropped the Bruins to 96 points while raising the Wings to 96 points and giving them the tiebreaker.

I’m not sure if I’ll do SSOTDs like this next season (or if I’ll even do them at all) but I thought this was an interesting look at how they went this year.