Canada’s Long Stanley Cup Drought, 2020
Edition
Oct 2020 Update:
Well,
here it is, the unusual Covid-19 hockey season is now over and Canadian teams
were once more shut out of the Stanley Cup Finals, and of course did not win
the cup for another years. So, that
brings the losing streak to 26 years.
This
was a particularly strange year, as nobody could be said to have had home advantage
during the playoffs, as they were played within the “Covid bubble”. However, since all the games were played in
Canada (Edmonton or Toronto), this could be thought to have been advantageous to
the Canadian teams. But it didn’t seem
to help, as both the Oilers and the Leafs got knocked out pretty quickly.
There
are a number of ways to calculate the likelihood of this event:
·
The binomial theorem now shows odds of 0.20% for
this event to occur. Basically, the binomial
theorem gives the answer to the question, if the probability of an event occurring
is p, and you repeat the experiment N times, what is the probability of the
event occurring exactly X times. In this
case that would be: if the probability of an event occurring in any given
experiment is .212 (the percentage of Canadian teams in the NHL over this
period) and the experiment is repeated 26 times (the 26 year streak), what is
the probability of there being exactly 0 Canadian teams in that span of time.
You can plug this into Excel’s BINOM.DIST
function, with the following syntax (BINOM.DIST (0, 26, .212, FALSE)) and the
answer is .00204. That’s two-tenths of
one percent.
·
Another way to calculate this is to raise .788 (the
proportion of non-Canadian teams) to the 26th power, giving .00204
or 0.20%. That’s just the probability of
the event Non-Canadian team Wins multiplied by itself 26 times
(.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X
(.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788)
X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788)
X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) X (.788) = .00204
The advantage of using the
binomial function is its versatility; you can calculate the probability of 1
win in 26 years, 2 wins, etc.. This
method is only good for the “0 wins” case, but that’s what we are primarily
interested in, so that’s ok.
·
The third way is to create a computer simulation,
that plays a hockey schedule thousands (or even millions) of times, with the probability of a
Canadian team winning the cup in any given year as .212.. I set up this simulation, as a 20000 year NHL
history (unlikely but that’s the fun thing about computer simulations) and ran
the simulation 100 times. That gave a
value of .00199, which is pretty close to the analytic solution of 0.00204
obtained by the other two methods.
The histogram below shows that the
experiment was fairly normally distributed, with the peak at or near the .002
(or 0.20%) level. There is one outlier
to the far right, which is interesting, but not necessarily unexpected.
So, we have awfully long stretch of Canadian team losses
occurring. It strains credulity to
consider this to be merely bad luck.
Some other theories have been propounded:
·
It’s
related to the Canadian dollar. But that
doesn’t work, as the Canadian dollar has varied considerably during this time
period, sometimes being lower and sometimes higher than the U.S. dollar.
·
Another
theory states that hockey players can’t stand the pressure of playing in the
Canadian cities, where the sport is taken very seriously by the fans.
Therefore, the players choke, basically.
The Globe and Mail’s main sports columnist likes that one, but I am
skeptical. That theory seems unlikely –
after all, professional athletes have come through a grueling system of
training and preparation to make it to the big leagues. They know how to handle stress.
So, the only theories remaining (that I can
think of), are:
·
It’s a
conspiracy - the league helps the U.S. teams win (say, via referee decisions or
Board of Governor actions), to help out teams in the more financially uncertain
U.S. marketplaces. But, that seems like
a difficult to conspiracy to actually make work, as the league simply doesn’t
have that sort of control over the referees or the owners.
·
Economics
- Canadian teams can make as much money
losing as they can winning, so they don’t manage their business affairs with
winning as a significant priority.
Indeed, playing rope-a-dope with Canadian fans might be an optimum
strategy, keeping player payrolls relatively low, while holding out “wait until
next year” hopes for the hockey-mad fans, who will show up, come what may.
Plus, this supports American teams, some of
which don’t have the sort of “stick with the team through thick and thin” fans
that Canadian teams have. Canadian teams
need American teams to survive, in order for the NHL to reach a continental
market, which of course includes that money-generating TV market. Such a strategy also increases the value of a
team enormously on the theoretical hockey team market and therefore increases
the wealth of the owner or owners of the Canadian team. After all, if weak market American teams
fold, that devalues the franchise of every owner in the league, including the
strong Canadian markets.
This is the theory that makes the most sense
to me.
Perhaps the Canadian sports media will give
another go at this. In recent years they
have nodded towards the strange phenomenon each spring, almost as a ritual
now. Their explanations are usually
pretty lame, and they also reveal their weakness with statistical reasoning
during these efforts. Not that I expect
much from a journalist, when it comes to math.
At any rate, the Great Canadian Stanley Cup
Drought continues.
==============================================
On the Road with Bronco Billy
If you have some spare time, possibly due to
lack of interest in the NHL playoffs, you might want to consider a nice road
trip, exploring the non-hockey contrasts between Canada and the U.S.. If so, then “On the Road with Bronco Billy” is
definitely your book.
Sit back and go on a ten day trucking trip in
a big rig, through western North America, from Alberta to Texas, and back
again.
Explore the countryside, learn
some trucking lingo, and observe the shifting cultural norms across this great
continent. There's even some hockey playoff talk (Oilers-Denver and
Oilers-Dallas), for those nostalgic for Canadian playoff representation.
It’s on Amazon (ebook), for a mere 99 cents
(U.S.).
Amazon U.S.: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Amazon U.K.: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Amazon Germany: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
Amazon Canada: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00X2IRHSK
A Dark Horse
Or, if
you want to continue contemplating mysterious runs of luck, you could try “A
Dark Horse”, which concerns the troubling run of good luck that a (fictional) horse
player experiences.
Also on Amazon (ebook), for 99 cents (U.S.).
Amazon U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon U.K.: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
Amazon Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01M9BS3Y5
