In an ideal world, every NHL team would succeed or fail based on pure merit. Imagine, for a second, if hockey teams could turn off injuries like a video game come true.
That’s obviously not the case, and All-Star weekend seems like a logical time to check in on the teams that are hit the hardest (or least often) by injuries.
Man Games Lost is a site devoted to measuring exactly that, both in simple terms and the sort of info that can make you wrinkle your brow.
Conveniently enough, they posted their findings as recently as today, so we can get a few bits of insight. (The full post is absolutely worth reading, though.)
Some takeaways:
- The Edmonton Oilers (214) and Buffalo Sabres (212) lead in man games lost. The Oilers topped another ranking ( “greatest cumulative impact of injured forwards or defensemen”) by way of the ITT metric. You were probably already aware that they’ve been hit hard with serious injuries to Connor McDavid and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
- The St. Louis Blues and New Jersey Devils deserve credit for staying in their playoff hunts by weathering some significant issues, based on a couple different measures.
- On the other end, the New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Washington Capitals have dealt with the least about of man games lost.
- To little surprise, Carey Price’s injury was the biggest loss among goalie injuries.
Again, more context can be found here.
Long story short, it’s tough to totally dismiss the teams at the extremes of each side. It also adds merit to the thought that the Blues and Devils have been pretty resilient.
Want to see where every team stands? Man Games Lost has a handy visual aid for that:
Plotting NHL team man-games lost (x-axis) against wins (y) gives you this. Does it look like you would expect? pic.twitter.com/i03h36ZbcO
— Man-Games Lost NHL (@ManGamesLostNHL) January 29, 2016
Any surprises?