BY GABRIEL JOHN OSTLER

We’re almost halfway through the NHL regular season, which means there’s enough time left for the league landscape to shift considerably; but it also means enough time has elapsed to admit Chicago is officially fucked as a franchise.

The current standings start to carry some weight around this point in the calendar – if, say, the Caps chose this moment to fall off the face of the Earth, you’d likely notice. So let’s take a look at who would be in the postseason if the campaign ended tomorrow, and see if we notice any discrepancies.

First, the East:

Nothing really grabs the eye here – the Met seems like it’s been Caps/Jacks/Pens forever, even though Torts just arrived in Columbus a few seasons ago. The Atlantic has two of the league’s streakiest teams in Buffalo and Montreal, hence their low goal differentials, but not in a way that makes you sit up and take notice.

Now, the West:

Again, scrolling down, not a lot out of place. The Jets/Preds/Avs are effectively the only franchises left in the Central. It’s new to see the Flames at the top of the Pacific, but with Johnny Gaudreau on pace for personal bests in goals, assists, and +/-, and Matthew Tkachuk producing like a young Corey Perry, it adds up. Then, the Wild Card, and the—WHAT?!

Minus -17?!

I’ve cut off the teams not in playoff spots for efficiency’s sake, but here’s where it’s at: the Ducks have a -17 goal differential and 44 points. There are 12 other teams in the league with a goal differential worse than -5. Not one of them has more than 40 points on the season.

The squads further in the red than the Ducks are New Jersey (-18, 35 pts), St. Louis (-20, 34 pts), Philadelphia (-23, 35 pts), Detroit (-24, 36 pts), Los Angeles (-28, 33 pts), Chicago and Ottawa (both at -30, 36 and 34 pts respectively). To reach Anaheim’s point total, all of these teams would have to have at least eight more wins than they do right now. I don’t mean to alarm anybody, but that’s a motherfucking DISPARITY if I’ve ever seen one.

Goal differential is not the entirety of a team’s story (it’s sort of like a less finicky version of +/-) but it is a good indicator of the team’s overall performance. To parse out what’s going on in a situation like Anaheim’s, though, you have to go on a game-by-game basis. Here’s how it breaks down.

The Ducks are 19-15-6 in 40 games this season. In their 19 victories, they have won by two or more goals only six times, or 32 percent. Conversely, in their 15 defeats, they have lost by two or more goals 13 times, a staggering 86 percent.

To put it bluntly: when Anaheim wins, they squeak by, and when they lose, they get blown the fuck out.

But as a great mathematician friend of mine has instructed me on many an occasion, randomness clumps, especially in a goal-tallying sport like hockey that can have empty-netters skewing close deficits. So how well does this accurately represent Anaheim as a team?

To more numbers:

(SOURCE: https://leftwinglock.com/pluck-charts/)

I know what you’re thinking: “I didn’t get paid enough in Geometry to understand this shit!” Which, fair. I don’t think any of us got paid in Geometry. I’m not sure if this even relates to Geometry. The point is graphs are hard, especially when they have more questionable bubbling than your intestines after a late-night Taco Bell run. Let me fix it up for ya.

We’ll start at the bottom. USAT% has been translated to shooting frequency, relative to the other team. If you pass 50 percent on this chart, it means you consistently outshoot your opponent. You can see Anaheim hovering around the 46 percent range, which is not only below average, but also only better than two teams: the Rangers (who are not good) and Ottawa (who are an affront to the entire sport).

Essentially, if you put the Ducks up against any one of 27 National Hockey League teams, they’re going to be spending an ass-ton of time in their own defensive zone.

Moving left is SH% + SV%, which is the purest luck indicator on the graph. The higher or lower you get above the X-axis, the more ridiculousness you’re respectively either dishing out or receiving. Only four teams have more luck when it comes to the puck going in the net, and each of those shoot at a far higher percentage than do the Ducks.

How do I know? Circle size, which is the top of the graph. The bigger the circle, the better the shooting percentage. League average is 7.7 percent, and Anaheim is markedly below that number. So the Ducks are consistently getting outshot by their opponents, and their shooting percentage isn’t any good, so the few ones they do take are heaping buckets of crap as far as goalscoring opportunities go. They’ve gotten fantastic strokes of fortune regarding how many of those trickle into the net, but that still doesn’t quite explain their abnormally good results. The missing piece to that is circle color, which you’ll notice for Anaheim is a violent orange.

That shade indicates save percentage. On this graph, you see a lot of cool tones, with some slightly warmer shades as success drifts to the sky. And then, in the bullshit quadrant, lies a speck of bloody citrus, brought about by one man: John Gibson.

The Anaheim net-minder has only been getting consistent ice time for three seasons, but he already has an All-Star appearance and a Jennings Trophy on his resumé. He’s also a fucking machine who’s pretty much singlehandedly keeping the Ducks in the playoff hunt. I mean, look at this shit:

It’s not all flashy highlights, though. Only three goalies in the league have faced over 1,000 shots at this point in the season: Craig Anderson (Ottawa, RIP), Gibson, and Vegas’ Marc-Andre Fleury.

The difference between them is Gibson is crushing them in save percentage. He sits at a cool .924. Anderson is a weak .905 and Fleury isn’t much better at .910. To find someone with a higher stat in this category than Gibson, you have to go all the way down to Casey DeSmith of Pittsburgh and Ben Bishop of Dallas, who both boast a nice .926.

They also both have faced over three hundred less shots than Gibson, who would also be the runaway leader in ice time amongst goalies if Fleury either hadn’t played four more games or had any sort of backup with the Golden Knights.

Somehow, Gibson’s backup, what’s left of Ryan Miller, is better than anyone in the state of Nevada who has access to a goalie mask. Barring catastrophic injury or a dramatic drop in performance, Gibson is a lock to be a Vezina Trophy finalist, and if he continues playing at this level, it’s going to be near-impossible to argue against him taking home the award.

The yellow-Duck road is winding to its terminus. Where has all this lead us? The conclusion of… yes, Anaheim is insanely lucky at this moment.

Their goal differential is utterly unsustainable; they’re not generating any shots or converting them at a high rate; and their horse-hockey coefficient is through the roof. What’s saving them right now is largely the messianic play of John Gibson, coupled with a few nice bounces. And with Gibson out for at least a week or so, a large part of that equation is going to fall from the figuring for the immediate future.

Streaky line play combined with red-hot goaltending is not a novel strategy — in fact, it’s the most common recipe for winning a Stanley Cup. Get into the postseason and have your net-minder stand on his head. If Anaheim makes it to the playoffs, they have just as good of a chance as anyone else to bring home the trophy given Gibson’s ability. All that remains to be seen is if their flukey formula holds up long enough to take them there.