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Neil PaineNov 15, 2024, 07:00 AM ET
CloseNeil Paine writes about sports using data and analytics. Previously, he was Sports Editor at FiveThirtyEight.
Hockey is a notoriously chaotic sport in which you need a large sample of games to know what’s real versus what’s just noise. For instance, it is estimated that it takes the entire 82-game NHL season to give us as much information about team quality as just 32 NBA games — or less than half the regular season — do.
So it’s always risky to draw grand conclusions from what we see over the first month of play on the ice. But that can’t stop us from finding interesting trends emerging from the early portion of the schedule.
Here are seven initial developments that have taken us by surprise in 2024-25 so far:
1. Ovechkin’s comeback against Father Time
One of the biggest storylines heading into the season was Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record, with the Great 8 starting the season trailing The Great One by 41 scores.
If the Washington Capitals star scored at his career rate of 0.60 goals per game, it would have taken him 69 games to catch Gretzky — well within the realm of possibility this season — but as I noted in the preseason, that production didn’t look realistic for the 39-year-old Ovechkin coming off the lowest-scoring full season of his 20-year career (31 goals). If Ovi kept declining or missed time, it was no sure thing he would reach Gretzky’s mark.
But instead of fading further with age, Ovechkin has made a huge comeback over Father Time.
Ovi already has 10 goals in his first 15 games of the season, the ninth time he has scored that many goals in that span of games to begin a season in his career. At his current pace, he will reach Gretzky within the next 47 games — setting the potential record-breaking date for early March. And while that’s still probably not realistic (he’s shooting at a 19% clip, well beyond his career rate of 12.9%), Ovechkin will challenge the record by early April…
Source link : https://www.espn.com/nhl/insider/story/_/id/42373273/seven-unexpected-trends-defining-2024-25-nhl-season-far
Author : Neil Paine
Publish date : 2024-11-15 12:03:11
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