The Washington Wizards posted a 6.10-point gap between their actual record and their expected points total this season. That was the largest xPoints deficit across the NBA and NHL. And yet the Wizards were not even the unluckiest team in their own league.
That distinction belongs to the Brooklyn Nets.
Due a Correction
The Brooklyn Nets finished the regular season with a cursed luck score of -64, the most extreme negative value across all three leagues tracked here. Their xPoints gap of -5.80 tells a familiar story: a team whose underlying performance metrics, point differential modeling, and shot quality data all suggested roughly six more points in the standings than they actually earned. Close-game variance, late collapses, and an unusual cluster of opponent shooting performances all contributed. Now entering a playoff structure where single possessions carry outsized weight, the question is whether those underlying numbers finally surface or whether the sample is simply too small to matter.
The Vancouver Canucks carry a Luck Index of -52 into the NHL postseason, though their xPoints gap of -0.80 is modest by comparison. What makes the Canucks interesting is that the gap was persistent rather than dramatic. They didn't lose massive chunks of expected standings points in a few bad weeks. They leaked value steadily, a point here, a point there, across a full 82-game schedule. The market tends to price teams on results, not process. Vancouver's process was better than the record suggests.
The Washington Wizards, with a Luck Index of -50 and that league-worst 6.10 xPoints gap, were the NBA's most statistically snakebitten team all season. Their underlying metrics painted a picture of a roster that should have won meaningfully more often than it did. Variance like this typically regresses, but the regular season is over, and whether Washington gets any payoff from that correction depends entirely on how deep their postseason run extends.
Living on Borrowed Luck
The Montréal Canadiens led all tracked teams with a Luck Index of 68 and an xPoints gap of 4.40. Those 4.4 bonus standings points were enough to reshape their playoff positioning. Bookmakers tend to anchor on final standings, and the Canadiens benefited from exactly the kind of close-game fortune that is notoriously unstable from one season to the next, let alone within a seven-game series.
The Buffalo Sabres posted a Luck Index of 67 but an xPoints gap of just 0.40. The high luck score paired with a negligible points gap suggests their fortune showed up in secondary metrics, PDO, save percentage spikes, or power play timing, rather than in the blunt instrument of the standings. Still, a Luck Index that high means something was running unusually hot.
The Tampa Bay Rays are the lone MLB entry, and unlike the basketball and hockey teams here, they are mid-season. Their Luck Index of 59 and xPoints gap of 6.20 represent the most actionable data point in this column precisely because there are dozens of games left for variance to do its work. Six wins above expectation in June is the kind of surplus that baseball's long schedule tends to erode.
Six wins is a lot of borrowed time.
The Regression Window
In the NBA and NHL, the regular-season data is now sealed. Regression, if it comes, will play out in playoff series where a single game can flip momentum and where the sample is brutally small. A team sitting five or six points below expectation all year can look like a different roster within two games if the underlying quality finally aligns with results. For MLB, the math is more patient. Teams carrying xPoints gaps above five tend to see meaningful convergence over the next 30 to 50 games. The Rays have roughly 100 games remaining, which is more than enough runway for the numbers to come collecting. None of this is a crystal ball. But the ledger rarely stays unbalanced forever.