☀️ Good morning and welcome back to The Nosebleeds.

🏒 We are somehow already 1/5 through the NHL season—we’ll take a look at who’s been hot (and who’s not).

🍻 Happy Friday!

❄️ The league’s best Big 4?

Approximately 20% through the 2023-24 NHL season, the story of the year has been the 12-3-1 Vancouver Canucks. Led by the league’s three leading point scorers (Elias Petterson, Quinn Hughes, and J.T. Miller), and one of the NHL’s leading goal scorers (Brock Boeser), Vancouver has had a better start to the season than any of their fans could have ever imagined. But is it sustainable?

Here are the facts:

1. Quinn Hughes has been the best defenseman in the sport this season.

2. Elias Petterson is, in my mind, a top five all-around player in hockey.

3. Thatcher Demko has been one of the top goalies in the NHL for a few years now, and leads the NHL with 12 Goals Saved Above Expected this season.

4. The Vancouver Canucks have been the luckiest team in the league so far, and will regress.

There are a couple of ways to determine which teams have been lucky and unlucky. In hockey, one of the most common stats to determine this is called PDO. PDO is the sum of a team’s shooting and save percentage. So, in general, a team with average luck should have a PDO that adds up to 1. Anything greater and that team has experienced some luck, lesser and they’ve been unlucky. Sure, some teams have better goaltending and defense, or elite shooters, boosting their team’s PDO, but when a team is struggling and you check their PDO for that stretch of time, I would bet it is below 1.

So far this season, the Canucks have the highest PDO in the NHL at 1.056, and the next closest is the Bruins (who have elite defense and goaltending) at 1.036. Simply based on that, they are likely due for some regression to the mean and will go on a cold streak at some point. But they are still a half-decent team who have an elite first line center, #1 defenseman, and a really good goalie, and with all of the points they’ve banked so far, I expect to see the Vancouver Canucks in the playoffs come April. And so do the numbers, as MoneyPuck gives them a 90.7% chance to make the playoffs, and The Athletic has them at 95%.

Other than the Canucks, there aren’t any major surprises at the top of the league. But the Edmonton Oilers being near the bottom of the NHL standings is certainly a surprise. They have been the opposite of Vancouver, really good underlying numbers (above a 55% xGF% at even strength), but their goalies cannot stop a beach ball. Because of their poor goaltending and McDavid’s slow start to the season (by his standards), Edmonton only has a 41% goal share at even strength (way below expected their expected 55%), and the leagues 4th worst PDO at 0.961.

Now we’re going to take some time to give love to some of the league’s most underrated players. The guys who might not score the most, but spend most of their time in the offensive zone when they are on the ice.

Here are MoneyPuck’s top three lines by xGF% (minimum 90 minutes together):

1. 🥇 Martinook-Staal-Fast: 73.5%

2. 🥈 Rodrigues-Barkov-Reinhart: 66.4%

3. 🥉 Marchment-Seguin-Duchene: 65.8%

Now the best defensive pairs (minimum 120 minutes):

1. 🥇 Mcdonagh-Carrier: 64.4%

2. 🥈 Pettersson-Karlsson: 62.3%

3. 🥉 Ekholm-Bouchard: 61.4%

And our updated Stanley Cup pick… Rangers over Stars.

🍁 Grey Cup 110 Preview

Now that all of you are huge CFL fans after the last newsletter, I thought it would be a great time to preview the 110th Grey Cup!

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will take on the Montreal Alouettes this Sunday to determine who takes home Canadian football’s greatest prize. The Bombers are making their fourth consecutive appearance in the Grey Cup, and are looking to cement themselves as one of the greatest dynasties in modern professional football with a victory. Meanwhile, the underdog Montreal Alouettes have quietly won seven-straight games heading into the big game, including a shocking upset over the 16-2 Toronto Argonauts in the Eastern Final last weekend—a game where they forced the league’s MOP (Most Outstanding Player) Chad Kelly and the Argos into nine turnovers.

The Bombers beat the Alouettes in both of their matchups this season—the first by a score of 17-3, and the second 47-17—but this is a different Montreal team than they were the last time these teams played in August.

The biggest difference in this game are the quarterbacks. The Bombers are led by multiple MOP-winner, Zach Collaros, who has done nothing but win football games since he came to Winnipeg. Meanwhile, Alouettes quarterback Cody Fajardo is not the same caliber quarterback as Collaros, and has struggled mightily against the Bombers in his career (for some perspective, Fajardo’s NFL comparison would be Daniel Jones IMO). Fajardo is going to have to be much better than he was against Toronto if Montreal wants to be champions, because odds are his defense won’t force nine turnovers again this weekend.

The Bombers are currently 7.5 point favorites in the Grey Cup, and with -380 odds to win, they have an implied win probability of 79% to take home their third Grey Cup in four seasons. Ultimately, for Montreal to win this game, they are going to need to force numerous Blue Bomber turnovers. If that does not occur, I expect the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to officially be revered as a dynasty.

🤓 NHL Analytics Trivia

That’s right, we’re sticking with the nerd vibes today.

• Question: which team had the highest PDO (sum of shooting and save percentage) in the 2022-23 NHL season?

Answer at the bottom.

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• Trivia Answer: the Boston Bruins led the league with a PDO of 1.036 last NHL season.