The advanced statistics community has made the numbers essay a more accepted read among hockey fans, even if presenting their analysis in a form of prose that doesn’t make your eyes glaze over is clearly still a challenge for the Corsi set.
That is why we’ve put today’s topic off as long as we have. Numbers columns have to have legs—or they read like a math thesis paper. Then I picked up the sports page—I know, how very Luddite of me—and saw that on Thursday morning, the Eastern Conference-leading Boston Bruins did not have enough points even to make the playoffs in the West.
Prior to Thursday night’s games, eight Western Conference teams had 30 or more points a quarter of the way through the season, while not one Eastern Conference team did. Western teams hold a dominant 83-36-15 record against the East this season, and if you’re looking for a larger sample size, NHL.com reports that the West has gone 50 percent or better in inter-conference games every season since 2005-06.
The question becomes, of course, why is the West suddenly so much better than the East? “One of the toughest questions I’ve been asked,” says R.J, Umberger, who should be an expert, but can’t put his finger on anything specific. He played three seasons in the East for Philadelphia, five in the West for Columbus, and is now back East with the Blue Jackets. “It’s funny. You look in the East, and there are a lot of superstars. A lot of good players. Why is the East not doing better? I don’t know.”
Sidney Crosby. Evgeni Malkin. Steven Stamkos. Alex Ovechkin. Phil Kessel. John Tavares. Nick Backstrom. Erik Karlsson. Pavel Datsyuk. Henrik Zetterberg. The East is loaded with star power. Last season, a 48-game campaign with no inter-conference play, the NHL’s top-four scorers and seven of the top eight played in the East. The season before it was 10 of the top 11. “So, are the scorers that much better in the East?” asks Detroit GM Ken Holland. “Or are the teams better defensively in the West?”
Holland is not comfortable in diagnosing the East before the Red Wings make their way through the conference a couple of times. But listen to him for a few minutes, and you get the feeling he subscribes to the latter theory. “The mentality in the West was, you knew you had some size and skill, but you knew you had to check, be good defensively and be comfortable in low scoring games—because there were a lot of them,” Holland says. “The West teams are built on good checking and good defences. Chicago and St. Louis come to mind as two of the best defences in the league.”
The NHL Players’ Association stats geeks said that making the playoffs in the East was going to be harder because there were more teams. What we’re learning, however, is that more teams might simply mean two more bad teams. “The Pittsburghs and Bostons are very comparable, but the East isn’t as deep as the West,” Holland says, pointing out that there are 10 or 12 Western teams capable of 95-to-100 points. “Is it a big enough sample size? I think you’d ideally like to wait ’til halfway through the year. But those are black and white numbers, 83 and 36. And it’s not like it’s two teams making that record.”
There are, as always, a few anomalies inside the math. Boston, the Beast of the East, has only played four games against the West, going 2-1-1. Ottawa should be better, and the Sens are 1-7-2 versus the West. Pittsburgh has played six times against the West (4-2-0) while Buffalo has played 11 (2-9-0). But on the other side, Edmonton has played the East 15 times and gone 5-9-1. Outside of those anomalies, the dominance is unilateral.
In the end, style of play is the deciding factor picked out between the two conferences right now. “The only year I played in the East I had a lot of points (51),” says Columbus defenceman James Wisniewski. “It felt like there was a lot of run and gun, a lot of trading chances. In the West it’s more about that big grinding, dump and chase, grind it out. The East is go, go, go. The West is structured.”
His teammate Jack Johnson figures the East is more entertaining for fans, but Wisniewski adds, “If that team is hot, and those behind-the-back plays are landing on the tape for backdoor tap-ins, they’ll win. But in the long haul, that structure, that tight defensive posture…. What do they say? Offence wins games, defence wins championships.”
They do. And the West is better than the East. Again.