The Toronto Maple Leafs are set to take on the Oilers tonight.
The Toronto Maple Leafs, fresh off a win vs the Flames on Monday, will look to sweep the province of Alberta against a struggling Oilers team. While the site will likely still have a game preview later, I wanted to talk about PDO since the Leafs and Oilers are at opposite ends of the spectrum in this useful “advanced” team stat.
PDO is figured out by combining a teams 5v5 shooting percentage with their save percentage. Over a long enough time, the two numbers will always combine to measure 100. This can be a useful stat for teams when judging and preparing for an opponent. A team with a bad record and a low PDO is going to be much tougher to beat than a team with a bad record and no indication that they’re just getting unlucky. Basically, if a team (or player) has a PDO over 100 they are getting lucky, and if they are under 100 they are getting unlucky.
PDO and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Maple Leafs are currently tied for having the fourth most points in the NHL. But they happen to have the league’s highest PDO, which suggests that they are getting a bit lucky and perhaps aren’t as good as their record suggests.
A deeper look shows that the Leafs – who give up WAY too many shots and scoring chances every game – lead the league in shooting percentage. Since we also know with 100% certainty that players have virtually no control over their shooting percentage, we can ascertain that the Leafs high-flying offense, while still scary on paper, is also getting very lucky.
The Oilers are a dangerous team, so their record should probably be ignored in preparation for this game. Despite bad luck that is preventing them from scoring and winning games, the Oilers are the NHL’s second-best possession team. They are fifth in the percentage of total scoring chances. The also have the fifth lowest PDO – indicating a pretty unlucky team.
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The Leafs on the other hand are a middle of the pack possession team, they score, but they have brutal defense, allowing too many shots and too high of a percentage of the total scoring chances that happen. The Leafs are the NHL’s highest PDO team. Though separated by 26 places in the standings, and eleven points, the Leafs would be foolish to consider themselves a superior team to Edmonton at this point.
PDO
PDO is a measure of luck because it will always normalize back to 100. If you get too good or bad of a percentage, it’s not sustainable and over time will always return to the norm. However, sometimes it could take a really long time for this to happen, and 82 games isn’t guaranteed to be enough of a sample size – there are always a few outlier teams every year. Last year the Avalanche was both the lowest team in both standings and PDO, while the Capitals were both the President’s Trophy winner and had the highest PDO. This is not great news for the Oilers.
In a salary cap league, where all teams are roughly equal and parity reigns supreme, PDO can be extremely useful in predicting the future. For instance, even though it might cost them this season, the Oilers can look at their stats and know that they have a good team and don’t need to blow it up or make wholesale changes. If their record was bad and they were closer to 100 (or over) then they could more confidently state that their team, as constructed, isn’t working.
For the Leafs, it’s important to know that their opponent might not have one of the best records in the league, but that play-wise they are still one of the league’s most dangerous opponents. They also know that their defense has to be better because they simply allow too many shots and chances against.
Next: Editor In Leafs Round Table
The Toronto Maple Leafs are enjoying the fruits of a lucky run right now, but they should realize before it’s too late that their record is currently better than it should be.
stats from naturalstattrick. com