We often hear about "elimination games," in which a team sees its playoff run end or extended. We sometimes look at a goalie's record and statistics in games in which his team might be eliminated and conclude that he's a Big Game Player/fraud/whathaveyou.
But I wanted to take a look at teams' records over the last 10 years when they have a chance to advance. Practically speaking, this is their record in games after they've won three games in the series already. We're ignoring whether the other team can advance, too -- that is, we're looking at teams' records when they have a 3-0 series lead as well as a 3-3 series tie.
It turns out there's quite a bit of variation by team. I doubt it has that much to do with anything other than a couple awful series here and there (cough 2010 BRUINS cough), but maybe you have some theories.
Here's the data from the last 10 full playoff years plus the first round of this year's tournament.
In the chart, WIN% is the W-L percentage in every game in which a win meant advancing to the next round, or winning the Stanley Cup. There's another number, ADV%, which goes along with SER. SER is the number of series in which the team has won three games. ADV% is the number of those series in which the team won the fourth game. It disregards any losses in-between.
So, Carolina and Tampa (including the second round this year) are flawless once they get to three wins in a series. Detroit almost is. San Jose who is trying to close out the Red Wings (again) on Sunday night, is middle of the road. Caps and Bruins? If we stat nerds believed in "choking," I'd make exaggerated gagging noises.
But it's the single "chance to advance" game winning percentage that's most interesting, at least to me.
In 12 series over the last 10-plus playoffs, the Pittsburgh Penguins have lost more often than they've won with a chance to eliminate their opponent. The Tampa Bay Lightning know this well. But you would think it difficult to win a Stanley Cup and make it to another Final with a record like that in games where you can snuff out an opponent and move on. I guess not.
The chart above is for a minimum of five series since the 2000 playoffs. Some teams that didn't make that cutoff include the Edmonton Oilers, with a .600 win percentage in five games over four series; Los Angeles Kings, at .500 over four games in four series; and the New York Rangers, 2-3 for a .400 win percentage over three series.
The Nashville Predators are 1-0 all-time. So they have that going for them.