Tank Hard for Bedard - Playoff chances are already Slim

[Provost]

Well here, goes... I am doing this one game early (at least mathematically) in hopes that I am made to look foolish by a string of Canucks wins.

The standard from a whole crap ton of historical data is that by the 20 games mark (around American Thanksgiving), any team that is either under .500 or more than 4 points out of  a playoff berth has pretty low odds to make the playoffs.  One more loss in the next 5 games and we can't make .500 by the 20 game mark.

The difficulty in making up ground is a function of a couple of things.  One main one is that the winning % range between a bad team and a good team is really quite small which makes it a lot harder of a road to make up ground than it looks.  Aside from a few outliers, a really good team over a season plays at .650 (106-107 points) and with the loser points, a REALLY bad team still plays at about .400 (65-66 points).  This was really illustrated last year when the Canucks played just lights out for half a season and still fell well short of a playoff spot.  That really reflected a best case scenario as a couple of teams we were chasing also faltered badly.  Still not good enough because when you fall behind the math is really against you.  Lots of teams between you and a playoff spot that you have to outplay, and a lot of guaranteed points between them for at least one of them to stay ahead of you.  It is almost a mathematical impossibility for a whole bunch of teams ahead of you to play sub .500 for the rest of the season.  Someone has to win games and get points out of each given game, and unless we win most of our in-conference games; they split all in-conference games between each other about 50/50; and then lose most of their games against the East... some teams will just stay ahead of us.  It is just math.  It isn't being negative.

What that means is when you look at 67 games left to play... if the Canucks played lights out at a .650 rate from here on out.. they end up with 98 points which is enough to squeak into a playoff spot with the historic cut off being about 96 points.  If the Canucks play really bad for the rest of the season at a .400 rate, they end up at 64-65 points.   That range doesn't give a lot of runway for the Canucks to actually make it, and a whole lot of possible outcomes that mean missing the playoffs.   The most likely outcome will be in the 73-83 point range for the season now, which already assumes the Canucks start playing quite a bit better than they have to start the season.

The odds of the Canucks making the playoffs on various websites as of 13th Nov:
MoneyPuck 8.5%
Playoff Status 21%
Hockey Reference 16.5%
Power Rankings 19.1%
Five Thirty Eight 24%

So basically a 1 in 5 chance of making the playoffs... which we always forget isn't actually the goal.  The odds of actually winning the Cup are vastly more insignificant than that.

The Team President keeps slagging off the coach who has to know by now that his contract isn't going to be renewed... the players have to know that too now, which is a super shitty thing to do to a coach who is trying to hold players accountable for poor play.  It also means that there is zero motivation for Boudreau to play the kids since his job is to win games in the short term and not to develop players for a roster he won't be coaching.  Injuries have already piled up, and the team wasn't performing well even when healthy.  There isn't a lot to suggest a massive turnaround for the team playing at an elite level for the remainder of the season.

More folks seem to be more onboard with the idea of trading away and rebuilding this time around, which seems like a good idea right now to me instead of chasing fairly long odds to make the playoffs.  There is no realistic path for this roster to get much better over the next couple of years.  No prospects to speak of along with cap issues that would make filling the holes possible via the UFA route.  Making big trades creates other holes, as we have relatively few areas of organizational strength (Our main strength being overpaid 3rd pairing D... which aren't the best trade assets).  It is hard to make big deals mid season, but hopefully some teams are facing injuries or want to keep up with their divisional rivals and will pay the price... and even more hopefully the Canucks brass are open for business.

The exception for a shorter term turnaround would be if they still managed to trade Miller for some D help and futures, and were able to sign Bo for reasonable dollars.  That could allow the cap space to fix some D issues and be more competitive in a year or two when some expensive contracts come off the books.  Barring that, I don't see a roadmap for becoming a contender that doesn't involve literally tearing it down and starting from scratch.  That includes Petterson, Hughes, and Demko to me, as a rebuild means we won't be contending any time soon while they are under club control.  They are also basically the main attractive trade pieces that would net us a ton of players, picks, and prospects that would form the basis of a rebuild.  Some folks keep mentioning just casting off our undesirable players and somehow getting assets in return that turn into the cheap, high end ELC contributors we need coming through the system... I don't know how you see that working, we would have to give up the futures we need to rebuild to get rid of those contracts.

From my "homer" side, 1 in 5 playoff chances mean at least every once in a while the team will actually manage it.  Maybe this is the year?  That is very Canucks like to improve enough to just make our draft position worse, yet make no noise in the playoffs.

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Provost

[aGENT]

That anyone even thinks we should still be even aiming for the playoffs, with this roster...? I mean WHY? 

 

[Coconuts]

Just rip the band-aid off, I'm tired of mediocrity and half-measures. 

 

Come on JR, come on Al, gather your infinity stones and..

 

[Fanuck]

The problem is this is how FA sees things:

[Elias Pettersson]

Blow hard for Bedard...

[goalie13]

It amazes me that people think the Canucks would actually win the draft lottery.

[Coconuts]

Just now, goalie13 said:

It amazes me that people think the Canucks would actually win the draft lottery.

Someone's got to. And even if we don't, which is the statistical probability, that top five is supposed to be loaded. 

 

The higher we draft the better our chance at snagging a franchise forward. 

[goalie13]

1 minute ago, Coconuts said:

Someone's got to. And even if we don't, which is the statistical probability, that top five is supposed to be loaded. 

 

The higher we draft the better our chance at snagging a franchise forward. 

True.  I'm kind of just saying that no Canucks fan should get their hopes up.  We could be dead last, have the best odds and I would still go in to the lottery assuming we will slip to 3rd.

[DS4quality]

2 minutes ago, goalie13 said:

True.  I'm kind of just saying that no Canucks fan should get their hopes up.  We could be dead last, have the best odds and I would still go in to the lottery assuming we will slip to 3rd.

It took me 36 tries just to get the Canucks to 2nd

[Drakrami]

Pretty amazing we have invested so much in this team, and it has a worse record than freaking Arizona which is playing other team's cap dumps as their top 6. 

[Provost]

7 minutes ago, goalie13 said:

It amazes me that people think the Canucks would actually win the draft lottery.

I don't actually think we would (hence the link I included).  A top 5 pick is still more than likely to turn into a top of the lineup player.  A couple more mid or later 1st round picks from sending out players would also likely be decent NHLers at the very least.

Just the centres:
Bedard, Fantelli, Leo Carlsson, Yager, Benson, Dvorsky, Stenberg, Ritchie

There are a ton of D ranked in the mid/late 1st round who would immediately be our best prospects in that position.

If they actually followed the player profile that JR talks about (big and fast), then you can actually draft to that identity.

[Provost]

6 minutes ago, Drakrami said:

Pretty amazing we have invested so much in this team, and it has a worse record than freaking Arizona which is playing other team's cap dumps as their top 6. 

That is the awful part, if we went into a full rebuild and traded away our best talent... the motley assortment of cap dumps we would have to take in return to make the salary cap work would probably end up with a better winning record.

[VegasCanuck]

37 minutes ago, Provost said:

Well here, goes... I am doing this one game early (at least mathematically) in hopes that I am made to look foolish by a string of Canucks wins.

The standard from a whole crap ton of historical data is that by the 20 games mark (around American Thanksgiving), any team that is either under .500 or more than 4 points out of  a playoff berth has pretty low odds to make the playoffs.  One more loss in the next 5 games and we can't make .500 by the 20 game mark.

The difficulty in making up ground is a function of a couple of things.  One main one is that the winning % range between a bad team and a good team is really quite small which makes it a lot harder of a road to make up ground than it looks.  Aside from a few outliers, a really good team over a season plays at .650 (106-107 points) and with the loser points, a REALLY bad team still plays at about .400 (65-66 points).  This was really illustrated last year when the Canucks played just lights out for half a season and still fell well short of a playoff spot.  That really reflected a best case scenario as a couple of teams we were chasing also faltered badly.  Still not good enough because when you fall behind the math is really against you.  Lots of teams between you and a playoff spot that you have to outplay, and a lot of guaranteed points between them for at least one of them to stay ahead of you.  It is almost a mathematical impossibility for a whole bunch of teams ahead of you to play sub .500 for the rest of the season.  Someone has to win games and get points out of each given game, and unless we win most of our in-conference games; they split all in-conference games between each other about 50/50; and then lose most of their games against the East... some teams will just stay ahead of us.  It is just math.  It isn't being negative.

What that means is when you look at 67 games left to play... if the Canucks played lights out at a .650 rate from here on out.. they end up with 98 points which is enough to squeak into a playoff spot with the historic cut off being about 96 points.  If the Canucks play really bad for the rest of the season at a .400 rate, they end up at 64-65 points.   That range doesn't give a lot of runway for the Canucks to actually make it, and a whole lot of possible outcomes that mean missing the playoffs.   The most likely outcome will be in the 73-83 point range for the season now, which already assumes the Canucks start playing quite a bit better than they have to start the season.

The odds of the Canucks making the playoffs on various websites as of 13th Nov:
MoneyPuck 8.5%
Playoff Status 21%
Hockey Reference 16.5%
Power Rankings 19.1%
Five Thirty Eight 24%

So basically a 1 in 5 chance of making the playoffs... which we always forget isn't actually the goal.  The odds of actually winning the Cup are vastly more insignificant than that.

The Team President keeps slagging off the coach who has to know by now that his contract isn't going to be renewed... the players have to know that too now, which is a super shitty thing to do to a coach who is trying to hold players accountable for poor play.  It also means that there is zero motivation for Boudreau to play the kids since his job is to win games in the short term and not to develop players for a roster he won't be coaching.  Injuries have already piled up, and the team wasn't performing well even when healthy.  There isn't a lot to suggest a massive turnaround for the team playing at an elite level for the remainder of the season.

More folks seem to be more onboard with the idea of trading away and rebuilding this time around, which seems like a good idea right now to me instead of chasing fairly long odds to make the playoffs.  There is no realistic path for this roster to get much better over the next couple of years.  No prospects to speak of along with cap issues that would make filling the holes possible via the UFA route.  Making big trades creates other holes, as we have relatively few areas of organizational strength (Our main strength being overpaid 3rd pairing D... which aren't the best trade assets).  It is hard to make big deals mid season, but hopefully some teams are facing injuries or want to keep up with their divisional rivals and will pay the price... and even more hopefully the Canucks brass are open for business.

The exception for a shorter term turnaround would be if they still managed to trade Miller for some D help and futures, and were able to sign Bo for reasonable dollars.  That could allow the cap space to fix some D issues and be more competitive in a year or two when some expensive contracts come off the books.  Barring that, I don't see a roadmap for becoming a contender that doesn't involve literally tearing it down and starting from scratch.  That includes Petterson, Hughes, and Demko to me, as a rebuild means we won't be contending any time soon while they are under club control.  They are also basically the main attractive trade pieces that would net us a ton of players, picks, and prospects that would form the basis of a rebuild.  Some folks keep mentioning just casting off our undesirable players and somehow getting assets in return that turn into the cheap, high end ELC contributors we need coming through the system... I don't know how you see that working, we would have to give up the futures we need to rebuild to get rid of those contracts.

From my "homer" side, 1 in 5 playoff chances mean at least every once in a while the team will actually manage it.  Maybe this is the year?  That is very Canucks like to improve enough to just make our draft position worse, yet make no noise in the playoffs.

 

You push as hard as possible, knowing that our chances of getting Bedard, EVEN if we finished dead last, are about the same as us making the playoffs.

[Coconuts]

21 minutes ago, goalie13 said:

True.  I'm kind of just saying that no Canucks fan should get their hopes up.  We could be dead last, have the best odds and I would still go in to the lottery assuming we will slip to 3rd.

Oh def, it'd be very Canucks. But when it boils down to it if we're going to be bad I'd rather be bad enough to draft as high as possible. 

 

We've been mediocre for years trying to make the playoffs under Benning and this season looks like more of the same, I'd rather just embrace a rebuild. 

[Dazzle]

39 minutes ago, Provost said:

Well here, goes... I am doing this one game early (at least mathematically) in hopes that I am made to look foolish by a string of Canucks wins.

The standard from a whole crap ton of historical data is that by the 20 games mark (around American Thanksgiving), any team that is either under .500 or more than 4 points out of  a playoff berth has pretty low odds to make the playoffs.  One more loss in the next 5 games and we can't make .500 by the 20 game mark.

The difficulty in making up ground is a function of a couple of things.  One main one is that the winning % range between a bad team and a good team is really quite small which makes it a lot harder of a road to make up ground than it looks.  Aside from a few outliers, a really good team over a season plays at .650 (106-107 points) and with the loser points, a REALLY bad team still plays at about .400 (65-66 points).  This was really illustrated last year when the Canucks played just lights out for half a season and still fell well short of a playoff spot.  That really reflected a best case scenario as a couple of teams we were chasing also faltered badly.  Still not good enough because when you fall behind the math is really against you.  Lots of teams between you and a playoff spot that you have to outplay, and a lot of guaranteed points between them for at least one of them to stay ahead of you.  It is almost a mathematical impossibility for a whole bunch of teams ahead of you to play sub .500 for the rest of the season.  Someone has to win games and get points out of each given game, and unless we win most of our in-conference games; they split all in-conference games between each other about 50/50; and then lose most of their games against the East... some teams will just stay ahead of us.  It is just math.  It isn't being negative.

What that means is when you look at 67 games left to play... if the Canucks played lights out at a .650 rate from here on out.. they end up with 98 points which is enough to squeak into a playoff spot with the historic cut off being about 96 points.  If the Canucks play really bad for the rest of the season at a .400 rate, they end up at 64-65 points.   That range doesn't give a lot of runway for the Canucks to actually make it, and a whole lot of possible outcomes that mean missing the playoffs.   The most likely outcome will be in the 73-83 point range for the season now, which already assumes the Canucks start playing quite a bit better than they have to start the season.

The odds of the Canucks making the playoffs on various websites as of 13th Nov:
MoneyPuck 8.5%
Playoff Status 21%
Hockey Reference 16.5%
Power Rankings 19.1%
Five Thirty Eight 24%

So basically a 1 in 5 chance of making the playoffs... which we always forget isn't actually the goal.  The odds of actually winning the Cup are vastly more insignificant than that.

The Team President keeps slagging off the coach who has to know by now that his contract isn't going to be renewed... the players have to know that too now, which is a super shitty thing to do to a coach who is trying to hold players accountable for poor play.  It also means that there is zero motivation for Boudreau to play the kids since his job is to win games in the short term and not to develop players for a roster he won't be coaching.  Injuries have already piled up, and the team wasn't performing well even when healthy.  There isn't a lot to suggest a massive turnaround for the team playing at an elite level for the remainder of the season.

More folks seem to be more onboard with the idea of trading away and rebuilding this time around, which seems like a good idea right now to me instead of chasing fairly long odds to make the playoffs.  There is no realistic path for this roster to get much better over the next couple of years.  No prospects to speak of along with cap issues that would make filling the holes possible via the UFA route.  Making big trades creates other holes, as we have relatively few areas of organizational strength (Our main strength being overpaid 3rd pairing D... which aren't the best trade assets).  It is hard to make big deals mid season, but hopefully some teams are facing injuries or want to keep up with their divisional rivals and will pay the price... and even more hopefully the Canucks brass are open for business.

The exception for a shorter term turnaround would be if they still managed to trade Miller for some D help and futures, and were able to sign Bo for reasonable dollars.  That could allow the cap space to fix some D issues and be more competitive in a year or two when some expensive contracts come off the books.  Barring that, I don't see a roadmap for becoming a contender that doesn't involve literally tearing it down and starting from scratch.  That includes Petterson, Hughes, and Demko to me, as a rebuild means we won't be contending any time soon while they are under club control.  They are also basically the main attractive trade pieces that would net us a ton of players, picks, and prospects that would form the basis of a rebuild.  Some folks keep mentioning just casting off our undesirable players and somehow getting assets in return that turn into the cheap, high end ELC contributors we need coming through the system... I don't know how you see that working, we would have to give up the futures we need to rebuild to get rid of those contracts.

From my "homer" side, 1 in 5 playoff chances mean at least every once in a while the team will actually manage it.  Maybe this is the year?  That is very Canucks like to improve enough to just make our draft position worse, yet make no noise in the playoffs.

 

Well done, Provost. I completely agree that the Canucks should be tanking at this point. There is little to suggest that we'll have the same kind of success that we had near the end of the season. Sell off assets and the Canucks can do a partial rebuild, at minimum. No more of this re-tool silliness that happened with both regimes. The fact that this regime brought up the word retool again should be a red flag. There is literally no improvement from what they were given from Benning. They have some good FA signings, but at the end of the day, it takes more than FA signings to make a good team.

[Furevanucks]

This team is terrible and I am willing to give up this year for Connor Bedard I am not talking ya medicore get close to the playoffs let's go scorced earth Miller should never have been resigned trade whoever is needed to be traded and build from ground up we go scorched earth we may even make playoffs next year we have all seen it happen before.

[NHL97OneTimer]

One comparison at the roster specs vs Boston tells you a lot about the make-up of this team.......shorter and lighter.  We have a lightweight team and yet we're no faster than Boston.  They're clearly hungrier and defend aggressively vs our roster who tends to give up too much space.

[MeanSeanBean]

Yes please. Look at home much fun teams like Montreal are having. Embrace the rebuild, sell us on the future and making the right moves to win a cup. 

[Provost]

34 minutes ago, VegasCanuck said:

You push as hard as possible, knowing that our chances of getting Bedard, EVEN if we finished dead last, are about the same as us making the playoffs.

Bedard isn't the only great player in the draft.... the consolation prize of rebuildng but missing out on the #1 player is to still get an excellent player who will likely be a cornerstone of your team for many years.

The consolation prize for chasing slim odds for the playoffs and missing is zero, worse than zero.... it is actually reducing your chances of success in future years when you get to start over to try to win.

 

Again, if you read the OP… those are the odds of just making the playoffs.  Who cares about that?  The odds of winning the Cup for us are at less than 1%… that is the only metric I care about.

You can't compare the two things... that is pure nonsense false equivalency.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Provost

[AnthonyG]

First try.