Pythagorean Expectations

Pioneered by Bill James in baseball pythagorean expectations basically state something obvious; if you want to win you should outscore your opponent and teams that outscore their opponents by a lot win more than teams that don’t. For more pythagorean background check out this post I wrote last year about how the Leafs save percentage affected their position in the standings.

This is a chart of expected points based on goals for and goals against. Goals for is across the top, and goals against goes down the left side:

The Leafs currently have 48GF and 58GA in 21GP putting them on pace for 187GF (terrible) and 226GA (mediocre). 187GF is so low it’s off the left side of this chart, but at 195GF and 225GA you’d expect a team to finish with about 78 points. Guess we’ll hope we lose the draft lottery again.