Yes, The Anaheim Ducks Are THAT Good

For those of you unfamiliar, NHL.com has a weekly column called “Super 16”. It’s a piece written by Corey Masisak every Friday that takes a pulse on 16 different teams and ranks them in whichever order he believes they are trending. It has been labeled “Power Rankings” in the past but they changed the format and the name coincidentally when they decided to start using fancy stats. At the end of the day it’s just an arbitrary list but it makes for an interesting read if you like hearing where NHL staff writers see the league heading week to week.

I was perusing last week’s rankings and I was a little struck by what he said about Anaheim, most notably this: “Anaheim has the highest PDO (shooting percentage plus save percentage) at even strength in the League. There's a very good chance that number (103.7) will regress. The Ducks are also well behind the Blackhawks and Blues in goal differential, meaning they are winning more close games but that's not typically a sustainable ‘skill’ in larger sample sizes.”

It’s really cute to see the journalists on NHL.com jumping on the advanced stats wagon. Sure, I did as well in the past year and I probably don’t use all the numbers correctly, but I do this for fun and not for a paycheque. When I read those sentences, I just get the feeling that Masisak is putting a lot of big words on the page without fully understanding how to use the information he’s giving us.

My question is: Why can’t we just accept that the Anaheim Ducks are legitimately good?

The PDO argument has been beaten into the ground against the Ducks since last season, in thepreseason, and into this season as our buddy Corey has so kindly rehashed. These folks aren’t wrong about the numbers – 102.5 in all 5v5 situations as well as 103.8 in close 5v5 situations – but when is the sample size going to be large enough?

Since it’s been so in vogue to make this argument against Anaheim for the past calendar year, I decided to put the team up to it now that they have reached the 48-game mark of 2013-14.

Last season, in all 5v5 situations, Anaheim ranked 5^th in the league in PDO with 101.6. This year so far sees them at an improved 102.5, ranking them 2^nd behind only St. Louis (but Masisak isn’t going to mention that, just drool over Vladimir Tarasenko for 200 words). Over that 96-game span, their 5v5 shooting percentage sits at 9.31% while their save percentage reaches 92.78%, making their PDO a high but respectable 102.1.

At 5v5 in close situations, the Ducks ranked 3^rd last season with a PDO of 102.1. This year, they weigh in at 103.8 which puts them 1^st overall. In the 96-game sample size, they’re shooting at a rate of 10.16% and saving at a 92.79% clip, putting their 5v5 close PDO at 103.0.

PDO is generally referred to as the “luck stat” where the expectation is that any given team will hover around 100.0 over a large enough – you guessed it – sample size. You can preach regression until the world comes to an end but I think this attitude completely ignores what a team is actually doing once they pop the skates on.

Advanced stats are nice and all when it comes to understanding the game and they have come a long way in a short time period relative to the storied history of capital “H” Hockey. The thing is that the numbers and the good ol’ eye-test aren’t mutually exclusive.

And what can we gather from the Ducks this season that tells us about their success just by watching? First, they don’t quit as a team. Even when they go down early in a game they stick it out and put forth a full 60+-minute effort. Second, they are getting contributions from up and down their line-up. Coach Bruce Boudreau has a deep understanding of the weapons at his disposal and not only employs them in smart situations but has developed chemistry in a wide variety of line combinations. Finally, their goaltenders are playing out of their minds when called upon. And yes, you can back these observations up with statistics.

To explore the first point, the Ducks sport a whopping 15-5-1 record when allowing the first goal of the game, putting their win percentage at .714% when being the first to see a deficit. Not only does this place them first in this stat category, the three teams tied for second – Pittsburgh, Boston, and San Jose – have only put forth a .450% win percentage with 9-10-1 records all around. They also rank first in the league when trailing after a full 20 minutes with an 8-4-1 record, good for .615% as their win percentage. Their chances drop off when trailing after 40 minutes, tied for sixth with a .250% and 2-5-1, but those eight games are the fewest in the league ahead of the Blues with a .273% success rate in eleven incidences.

As far as my second point goes, it only takes looking at a boxscore to see that other teams are having trouble defending whoever Boudreau puts over the boards on any given shift. In 48 games, they have 15 skaters with 12 points or more while only ranking 3rd in total goals for. As far as the rest of the top-five go, Pittsburgh has 11 skaters in 48 games, while San Jose, St. Louis, and Chicago all have 13 skaters in 47, 45, and 49 games, respectively, with 12 points or more. (UPDATE: After their matchup with Vancouver, Anaheim reached 16 skaters with 12 points or more in 49 games.) A big part of this success is that Boudreau is not afraid to cycle different players alongside Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, who combine for 102 points on their own, on the top line. Even on nights when the pair isn't putting pucks in the net, some of the other guys seem willing and able to pick up the tab.

The goaltending has been a great help to the Ducks’ league-leading dominance, and the big factor in this lies on the shoulders on Jonas Hiller. Hiller has appeared 32 times this season, accumulating a record of 23-4-4. During that workload, he has only allowed more than 3 goals a mere 5 times, the last of which occurred in a loss to the Dallas Stars on November 26. After that date, Hiller earned 2 of his 4 overtime losses before charging out to 14 straight victories which is a streak that continues to this day. Due to injuries to backup Viktor Fasth, Frederik Anderson earned some ice time and earned the confidence of the team by going the first 7 games of his NHL debut with trips to the win-column. These two secondary options have gone for a 12-4-1 record in their limited starts, all while the fans eagerly await highly-regarded prospect John Gibson to take the ice for his first start.

The other big knock on the Ducks is that they have played a West-leading 24 games against the Eastern Conference because we’re realising how bad the East is. The Ducks are 16-5-3 against the East, but this completely ignores the fact that they also have gone 19-3-2 against the Western Conference and still haven’t lost a game in regulation in 21 games in their own barn. Say what you want about this team but it's all just excuses at this point.

Are the Ducks due for a regression moving forward? I wouldn’t doubt it for a moment but I would be hard-pressed to believe that it will drive their fortunes down all that much either. Need I remind you that the 2013 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks, in 48 games, amassed a 36-7-5 record so the start Anaheim is having isn’t all that far-fetched. I should also mention that I am, by birth, a San Jose Sharks fan. I HATE the Anaheim Ducks and that stupid duck-foot/"D" logo. All that said, they grabbed my attention in the lockout-shortened season last year and as much as I hate to say it, they haven’t given me a reason to place doubt in them this year. And I feel like they should be given the credit they deserve, fancy stats be damned.