u/SubElitePerformance

Now that the Devils are 2-0 and the Rangers are 0-2 in the preseason, I have been assured by Rangers fans (my dumbass friends) that losing records in the preseason actually means the team will be good, like the 23-24 Rangers squad and teams that do well suck in the regular season, like the 23-24 Devils. I decided to run a statistical analysis to confirm or deny this theory.

Teams with losing records have successful regular seasons

To test this theory, I looked back at the last 5 preseasons and subsequent 160 team seasons testing every preseason game result (533 total games) against their final regular season record. To normalize, I converted their records to points percentage so that the difference between total points for the two groups were discounted. For the actual analysis I utilized Pearson and Spearman correlations for each season and pulled out the top 8 teams and bottom 8 teams for each year.

Verdict: Theory rejected

https://preview.redd.it/x8ldwk06y9rh1.png?width=629&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fefe3298890e5d1cba6497c025c8c2c6fda6d25

https://preview.redd.it/u8op9438y9rh1.png?width=629&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa442abf09ab8bab4d2bb4f08fbd433c3291b76a

https://preview.redd.it/mjgafs7cy9rh1.png?width=447&format=png&auto=webp&s=b6733f9ea4740fe5f863aaef93821cbc25bde23d

https://preview.redd.it/7ayrugfmz9rh1.png?width=915&format=png&auto=webp&s=73cf3b52db47400e0e82c81ed93a691143d67b27

https://preview.redd.it/b169t8mnz9rh1.png?width=883&format=png&auto=webp&s=33630227b5cce75d264c78ca457b10e87de610c2

Theory Analysis

What the analysis results actually show is a positive correlation between preseason record and regular season record across the whole sample. Interestingly enough, 21-22 and 23-24 were slightly negative, however they were not significant and leaned towards noise in the dataset.

Across the whole sample the “top 8” teams for each season made the playoffs in 62% of seasons whereas “bottom 8” teams only made the playoffs 48% of the time.

What to take away from this

The preseason is only a couple games played with non-standard rosters and unfinished systems. A sample this small indicates that while it’s better to always be good, it’s mostly a crapshoot.

All this to say, it’s preseason. Let’s just enjoy it for what it is.

What are your thoughts?

Anthony Corona (you may know him as Ace) sits down with Brett Pesce and has a very good conversation about the Devils.