Here's an excerpt from our analysis in the New York Times.
Based on this research, we focused on several championship characteristics that might predict the winner of this year’s Stanley Cup finals. We also applied a Monte Carlo simulation to compute series probabilities for the finals.
In particular, we focused on factors related to sports psychology like big game experience, leadership and consistency. These concepts have proven to be common themes across all sports we have studied.
Big Game Experience: Across all sports, we have found a meaningful relationship between big game experience and winning championships. In our work, big game experience is measured by appearances in finals over the past three years. In the N.H.L., the team with an edge in this area has gone 11-2 (84.6 percent) in Stanley Cup finals series over the past 33 years. Both the Blackhawks and Bruins have made finals appearances over the past three years. Edge: Even
Read the complete article here:
http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/keeping-score-which-statistics-show-path-to-the-cup/
