The Pythagorean expectation model takes a team's goals scored and goals allowed across a full season and converts them into a predicted win percentage. It strips away the noise of overtime coin flips, empty-net sequencing, and shootout roulette to ask a simple question: given how much you outscored or were outscored by opponents, how many wins should you have?
The gap between that prediction and a team's actual record is one of the cleanest luck signals in hockey. A negative gap means a team won fewer games than its goal differential warranted. A positive gap means it banked wins it probably shouldn't have. Neither version tends to persist.
Most Cursed by Pythagorean Gap
1. New York Rangers - A Pythagorean win% of .475 is not flattering. Finishing at .415 is actively hostile. That 60-point gap is the largest in the league by a wide margin, meaning the Rangers found ways to lose close games at a rate that defied the underlying math. Their goal differential said below average. Their record said basement.
2. Utah Mammoth - The expansion novelty did not come with expansion luck. Utah's Pythagorean mark of .555 projected a comfortable playoff position, but the actual .524 left them scrambling. A 31-point shortfall in a conference this tight is the difference between home ice and a road series.
3. Tampa Bay Lightning - The gap here is only two points, .612 predicted versus .610 actual. Tampa makes this list mostly because almost nobody else underperformed their Pythagorean number this season. This is rounding error dressed up as a ranking.
4. Colorado Avalanche - Colorado's predicted .689 was the best underlying number in this entire dataset, yet they finished at .671. An 18-point gap on a team this talented mostly reflects a few blown third-period leads in October that felt more catastrophic than they were.
5. Ottawa Senators - A .561 Pythagorean win% and a .537 actual record means Ottawa left roughly two wins on the table over 82 games. Not devastating, but for a team fighting for playoff positioning, those are the margins that sting.
Most Blessed by Pythagorean Gap
1. San Jose Sharks - The Sharks' goal differential pointed to a .425 team. They finished at .476. That 51-point positive gap is the largest overperformance in the league, a testament to winning the games they had no statistical business winning. Good for them. For now.
2. Los Angeles Kings - Wait. The Kings' Pythagorean win% of .453 is higher than their actual .427. That is not overperformance. That is a 26-point underperformance. LA appears on the blessed list, but the numbers tell a cursed story. Sometimes the model just shrugs.
3. Detroit Red Wings - A .466 Pythagorean expectation and a .500 actual record means Detroit squeezed 34 extra points of winning out of a below-average goal differential. They played .500 hockey while being outscored like a .466 team. That is a neat trick with an expiration date.
4. Anaheim Ducks - Anaheim's underlying numbers said .473. Their record said .524. That 51-point gap, tied with San Jose for the league's largest positive variance, suggests the Ducks were exceptionally good at winning by one and losing by three.
5. Montréal Canadiens - The Canadiens posted a .585 actual win% against a .550 Pythagorean prediction. A 35-point positive gap on a genuinely good team is interesting because it suggests Montréal might be even slightly less dominant than the standings indicate.
What This Tells Us
The full range this season runs from New York's minus-60 to San Jose and Anaheim's plus-51. That is a 111-point spread across the league, which is fairly typical for a post-lockout NHL season.
Historically, Pythagorean gaps regress almost entirely within one season. Teams that overperform by 40 or more points tend to lose three to five wins the following year. Teams that underperform by similar margins tend to gain them back. The Rangers, in other words, are probably not as bad as 2025-26 suggested. The Sharks are probably not as resilient.
The math remembers, even when the scoreboard forgets.
