NHL Short-Handed Goals Cue Wins 70% of the Time

It’s always felt like a team that allows a short-handed goal loses that game most of the time in the NHL. The feeling is accurate. Nearly a century’s worth of evidence validates the theory about one of the most devastating plays in hockey. Examples are fresh. The eighth-seeded Washington Capitals trailed the Presidents’ Trophy winner New York Rangers 3-2 at Madison Square Garden with three minutes, eight seconds left in the second period of Game 2 of the Stanley Cup playoff first-round series.

Hammered by blue-line injuries and seeking a beachhead in a tough road environment, the Capitals were in it. Then Alexander Ovenchin’s inability to handle a pass along the boards sent the Rangers screaming onto their offensive zone, where K’Andre Miller scored what would be the decisive goal in a 4-3 Rangers victory. Washington went from building momentum and attempting to tie the game on the power play to down 2-0 in the series.

UPDATE: The Rangers won Game 3 with the help of a Barclay Goodrow short-hander in a 3-1 victory. By any analysis, New York has been the more successful team this season, with a superior roster reflected in the Rangers entering the playoffs as a massive NHL betting favorite in the series. However, their Game 1 win was another data point that supported a long-held maxim.

According to information provided by Sportradar, the official betting data rights partner of the NHL, since the 1933-34 season, teams have a .699 win percentage in games where they score a short-handed goal. They earn at least a point 71% percent of the time.

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Shorties a Force of Statistics, Hustle, Momentum

Goodrow’s short-hander marked the 372nd time the Rangers used a penalty-kill tally to win.

“It’s disastrous, obviously, particularly in a tight game,” Monumental Sports Network Capitals insider Tarik El-Bashir told Gaming Today. “It also impacts the rest of the power play. … I can’t imagine many PPs score after giving up a shorty.” Philadelphia winger Travis Konecy was the regular-season leader with six. The Montreal Maroons will likely be memorialized as the kings of NHL opportunism.

The two-time Stanley Cup champions, inactive since 1938, won at a .800 clip, albeit in just 20 games, when scoring short-handed. The Vegas Golden Knights are the active-franchise leaders at 77.6%, but benefit from a small sample, too, as an expansion franchise in the 2017-18 season. Boston has been the most prolific of the Original Six clubs, ranking third at 74.1% with a league-high 443 wins in such situations. The Toronto Maple Leafs, also of the Original Six (67.8%), have the most losses in league history (145) when scoring short-handed.

Most Successful NHL Teams When Scoring Short-Handed

(Via Sportsradar. Through April 27, 2024)

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