Start celebrating Winnipeg Jets fans – your team is heading to the playoffs.
Well…we don’t know for sure yet. But based on an old measuring stick, it looks pretty promising. As the saying goes, NHL teams that are in a playoff position by the time American Thanksgiving rolls around will make the post-season.
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University of Winnipeg math instructor Shannon Ezzat took a close look at the saying and found it’s not completely accurate.
“If it held 100 per cent of the time, we wouldn’t watch sports from Thanksgiving until the playoffs,” Ezzat said. “We would know what happens.”
Ezzat examined the NHL standings at Nov. 22 from the last dozen seasons. He found 22.7 per cent of the teams that held a playoff spot didn’t qualify for the post-season at the end of the season. The majority of clubs that fell out of the picture were those in sixth, seventh or eighth place.
“It’s not very surprising,” Ezzat said. “Out of the years I looked at, 11 of the 22 eighth seeds missed the playoffs. It’s basically a coin flip.”
With the Jets sitting among the top five teams in the league, Ezzat calculates their odds of making the playoffs at roughly 80 per cent. He credits Winnipeg’s six wins in its last eight games in helping the organization gain an advantage.
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“They’re up eight points above .500 now which is pretty decent,” Ezzat said. “A seven-point lead on teams that are just squeaking in with plus one right now, that’s a huge difference. You can’t discount having points in hand.”
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