(Update after Game 5): Oilers and Panthers, What are the Odds of a Reverse Sweep (2024 Stanley Cup Finals)?
Update after Game 5:
Probability of Team B (Oilers) Scenarios, Given Starting at 2-3 wins Pct
Win Game 6 at Home, having won Games 4, 5: 297/540 55%
Win Game7 Visitor, having won Games 4, 5, 6: 111/540 21%
The Oilers-Panthers Stanley Cup Final series is now at 3 games to 1 for Florida. Since Edmonton had such a convincing win in Game 4 (8-1, thereby avoiding elimination) there are tentative speculations about whether the Oilers may do a reverse sweep. That is when a team that is 0-3 sweeps the next 4 games, and ends up winning the series (i.e. sweeps the last four games).
Looking at history, the last time this occurred was 1942, when Toronto beat Detroit in such a manner. That’s about 80 years ago, so reverse sweeps in the final are quite rare.
That’s a combination of a lot of factors. First, there is the fact that Team A has to go up 3-0 before it is mathematically possible for Team B to win a reverse sweep. That itself isn’t all that common. Then, Team B must win 4 straight games, a tough thing to do in the playoffs, especially the finals.
Below are results of a simulation model that I developed in R, showing some probabilities concerning a reverse sweep.
The model uses 15 playoff series per season and 100 seasons per run. It was further run 10 times. Note that Monte Carlo models are approximations, and tend to be more accurate (have less variability) the more runs you do.
Also, note that the probabilities of Team A and Team B winning at home are taken from actual results since 1993. The probabilities or Team A and Team B losing while on the road are, of course, the converse of those.
First the assumptions and overall results of the model:
Number of Series per year: 15
Number of Seasons per Simulation 100
Number of Runs of Simulation 10
Total Number of Playoff Series 15000
Games Possible, all Series got to 7: 105000
Actual number of Games in sim: 87130
Pct of Possible actually played 83.0%
Probability, Team A winning at home: 57.2%
Probability, Team B winning at home: 50.2%
The simulation then looked at the probability of Team A (the home team for Games 1, 2, 5, 7) getting to the 3-0 stage, which is obviously necessary for a reverse sweep to have the possibility of occurring.
Probability of Team A Getting to 3-0 wins Pct
Win Game1 at Home 8605 57.4%
Win Game2 at Home, having won game 1 4941 32.9%
Win Game3 Visiting, having won 1 and 2 2482 16.5%
So, overall the probability of a 3-0 lead for Team A is 16.5%, or about about 1 in 6. So, most years there will be between 2 and 3 series out of 15, where the team that was higher in the regular season standings (Team A) takes a 3-0 lead. For the finals themselves, this should only happen about twice per 11 years.
But now we are interested in how often Team B (the lower ranked team during the regular season) wins the series, given that they are behind 3-0 after 3 games. Remember that their are 2482 possibilities, where Team A has a 3-0 lead. That becomes the denominator for the win percentages calculated below.
Probability of Team B Scenarios, Given Starting at 0-3 wins Pct
Win Game 4 at Home 1265 51.0%
Win Game 5 Visitor, having won game 4 540 21.8%
Win Game 6 at Home, having won4, 5 297 12.0%
Win Game7 Visitor, having won4, 5, 6 111 4.5%
Of course the Oilers are at 3-1 now, having won Game 4 quite convincingly. However, the model has no knowledge of that, so it just applies long-term historical data again.
Probability of Team B Scenarios, Given Starting at 1-3 wins Pct
Win Game 5 Visitor, having won game 4 540 42.7%
Win Game 6 at Home, having won4, 5 297 23.5%
Win Game7 Visitor, having won4, 5, 6 111 8.8%
So, based on this model, the Oilers have about a one in ten chance of completing a reverse sweep. That’s unlikely, but not tremendously unlikely. It is similar to tossing 3 heads in a row, or drawing an Ace of any suit from a deck of cards. In regular life, we see events like this quite frequently.
However, we know more things than the model does:
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Winning 8-1 arguably means the Oilers have better odds than the model predicts.
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Having knocked the Panthers top goalie out of that game arguably means the Oilers odds are better than the model predicts.
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Having their top lines regaining their scoring touch arguably means the Oilers odds are better than the model predicts.
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The fact that the Oilers are no strangers to long winning streaks (e.g. a streak of 16 straight wins this year) arguably means the Oilers odds are better than the model predicts.
On the other hand:
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The Panthers goalie may have had his one bad game and will return to form, stymieing the Oilers’ big guns as he did for 2 and 2/3 games.
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The Panthers are no strangers to bounce-backs and may just shake off their bad game, especially with the crowd (and therefore, possibly the officials) behind them.
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Conversely, the Oilers will not have their wildly enthusiastic fans (and therefore, possibly the officials) behind them.
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What follows is an account of a ten day journey through western North America during a working trip, delivering lumber from Edmonton Alberta to Dallas Texas, and returning with oilfield equipment. The writer had the opportunity to accompany a friend who is a professional truck driver, which he eagerly accepted. He works as a statistician for the University of Alberta, and is therefore is generally confined to desk, chair, and computer. The chance to see the world from the cab of a truck, and be immersed in the truck driving culture was intriguing. In early May 1997 they hit the road.
Some time has passed
since this journal was written and many things have changed since the
late 1990’s. That renders the journey as not just a geographical
one, but also a historical account, which I think only increases its
interest.
We were fortunate to have an eventful trip - a
mechanical breakdown, a near miss from a tornado, and a large-scale
flood were among these events. But even without these turns of fate,
the drama of the landscape, the close-up view of the trucking
lifestyle, and the opportunity to observe the cultural habits of a
wide swath of western North America would have been sufficient to
fill up an interesting journal.
The travelogue is about
20,000 words, about 60 to 90 minutes of reading, at typical reading
speeds.
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