As covered in far more detail in Chapter 7 of Rob Vollman's Hockey Abstract, there are five basic ways that luck can influence a team's position in the standings: injuries, shooting and save percentages (which is called PDO when added together), their power play and penalty killing percentages (which is called Special Teams Index when added together), their record in one-goal games (regulation time only), and their record in overtime and shoot-out games.

 

IMPORTANT: Each of these categories involve a combination of skill and luck, not just luck! There is also some overlap between these categories, so don't leave all the sliders at Full! You have the freedom to assign your own approximate weightings to each category. "Full", for instance, means it's almost all luck and without overlap (e.g. overtime/shoot-out record).

 

Data is pulled from the NHL's official web site, and the visualization was prepared by Robb Tufts. For questions contact the designer Rob Vollman by emailing vollman at hockeyabstract dot com.