Power plays and small samples
Special teams percentages swing violently across a season and stabilise very slowly. A hot power play over ten games is usually a normal power play that has had ten good games.
Power play opportunities are few — a handful a game — so conversion rate accumulates observations far more slowly than even-strength measures. The sample is tiny long after the season feels established.
Underlying shot and chance rates on the power play stabilise faster than the conversion rate, which makes them the better measure if you are going to use one.
That is also the expensive part. It is among the most quoted statistics in hockey broadcasts and among the least predictive at the horizons people quote it over.
What to do with it. Use power play shot generation rather than conversion percentage, and ignore any special-teams figure based on under about thirty opportunities.
The archive
What the published price did in the NHL
1,280 games in the NHL that are over and carried a price when we wrote them up, between November 26, 2025 and November 6, 2026. Each count sits beside what it is out of, and the share is the one divided by the other.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shorter price won | 712 | 1,251 | 56.9% |
| The favourite covered the handicap | 451 | 1,277 | 35.3% |
| The total went over | 652 | 1,277 | 51.1% |
| The home side won | 670 | 1,280 | 52.3% |
- Points in a game, on average
- 6.29
- Winning margin, on average
- 2.25
How wide the games were
Over 1,825 finished games in the NHL with a score — a margin needs no price, so this sample is wider than the one above.
- Half were decided by this or less
- 2
- One in ten by this or more
- 4
- The widest
- 10
How they ended
Over 1,824 finished games in the NHL whose result line says how it ended — the feed's own one-line verdict, not a reading of the play.
| What | How often | Out of | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Went past regulation | 445 | 1,824 | 24.4% |
| Settled on a shootout | 154 | 1,824 | 8.4% |
1 game landed exactly on the number — the handicap or the total — so it is in the count it is out of and in neither result.
The prices counted here are DraftKings', as they stood when we last wrote each game up — one snapshot per game, near kick-off for almost all of them, and never a closing line. So this says what the published line did, not how it moved on the way there.
A season that happened. Nothing here predicts the next game, and none of it is advice.
Counted November 6, 2026.
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