The Wild Are Best In The Standings, And Nowhere Else

NOTE: Before you read this entry, read this.

One thing that always amuses me in sport is the overreaction to early season standings. A second thing that amuses me is the reliance and pervasion of flawed statistics that don't really tell us anything. Today, I'm going to do my best to combat both.

PDO is one of the most simplistic advanced stats and also one of the most useful. It's hockey's equivalent of BABIP, for those who know sabermetrics in baseball. With great accuracy, we can use PDO to predict regression and progression, both for teams and for players.

The Wild are not a good team. This was evident last season when they struggled to generate shots and score goals. The "retooling" of the team this season was done at the expense of two of their top three players in offensive GVT (Martin Havlat and Brent Burns). Adding Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi certainly will help you on offense, but not by much if you have to give up two of your three best scoring assets to do so. Needless to say, I predicted the Wild to finish bottom five in the league, and Hockey Prospectus actually predicted them to finish 30th.

Yet, on November 21, the Wild are atop the league standings. Enjoy it while you can, St. Paul, because it's not going to last. A cursory look at the stats shows that the Wild currently are getting outshot by 5.6 shots/game. That mark ranks 27th in the league, and if you've read my previous entry, you'd know how important shot differential is.

We can further expand on this concept through PDO, and by doing so, we can see with more clarity just how lucky the Wild have been this season. (Note: I have seen PDO defined as both the sum of save percentage and shooting percentage in all situations, as well as just even strength. I am choosing to use the all situation numbers here because they are easier to acquire.)

Here's the data I've compiled:

In sports, the most important factor in any skill, streak, or metric is sustainability. We want to know if a player's career year was a fluke, or if he can sustain it. We want to know if a team's breakout season was sustainable. PDO can help us tell what's sustainable and what isn't. We can expect most teams and players' PDO ratings to come back to the league average of 100 over time. Thus, we can expect Minnesota to regress.

However, to form a league average of 100, some teams need to stay above the average, and some need to remain below. Not everyone will end up at 100 at the end of the season. It's entirely possible that Minnesota could continue to get lucky, maintain a high PDO, and make the playoffs this season. We saw this happen last year with Anaheim, who maintained a 101.6 PDO throughout the season, made the playoffs, lost in the first round, and have since regressed to a bottom-level team as we would have expected.

I don't think sustainability is likely with the Wild. I would expect them to regress sooner rather than later. Here's what stands out to me:

1. Save Percentage

The Wild currently lead the league in this metric behind Josh Harding's .945 and Niklas Backstrom's .935. Somewhat ironically, both of their career marks are an identical .918. We would be foolish to expect the Wild goalies to keep this run up, especially considering Minnesota has allowed the fourth most shots this season--the barrage of shots that Backstrom and Harding face is bound to turn against them at some point.

2. Shooting Percentage

Minnesota's slightly subpar 8% shooting percentage is about what we'd expect, because they simply don't have above-average offensive players. They also don't generate enough shots to overcome their lack of skill. 

3. Shot Differential

That shot differential is a killer. In the case of Anaheim last season, they had the goaltending to overcome the nights when their shooting percentage wasn't absurdly high. Minnesota doesn't have the offensive fallback when their goaltending inevitably falters, in my opinion.

Expanding on this concept, compare the Wild to the Bruins, the team just ahead of them in the PDO "race."  Boston has 69 more shots than the Wild this season, and their shot differential is +4.3/game (compare that to Minnesota's -5.6/game). Boston has the ability to outshoot opponents, keeping games in their favor. Minnesota doesn't.

Of course, I don't think Boston will shoot 11 percent all season, but they take enough raw shots on goal to compensate for this anomaly. They're still going to score a high gross number of goals when their shooting percentage comes down. Minnesota won't.

Similarly, Boston has allowed 120 less shots than the Wild, so if and when their save percentage crumbles, it won't affect them as badly as it will the Wild, because Boston's gross number of goals allowed will also be lower. That's why I believe Boston's PDO is more sustainable and less a complete product of luck than Minnesota's.

The Wild have all the factors of regression about them: a poor shot differential, poor gross shots for/against numbers, a high PDO, and an overall roster that simply doesn't impress me. These things will combine to hurt Minnesota very quickly, and why I still don't see them in the playoffs, despite this start.