A Perfect Record

Who Wins? is a fun site for fans to check out during the playoffs. You can get all of the odds of your favourite team winning a series based on the history of the league or all sports. Take the senators for example. When losing the first two games of the series an NHL team has a .132 record of winning the series. If those two games are on the road then the odds fall to .099.

"But that's history, that's not the sens! We're going to wake up in front of our quiet crowd that only cheers against other teams! Alfie might be back! And Spezza might be out!"

In that case, sens fans would be right. All of those things go in their favour and it's true that those numbers apply to all NHL series in history and not to the senators entirely. This number, however, does apply to the Trojans:

when trailing 2-games-nil, the Ottawa Senators have a perfect series record of 0-6 and a Game 3 mark of 3-3.

The Dynasty That Never Was has achieved perfection in at least one area. Of course, there is a light at the end of the tunnel:

In the history of best-of-7 NHL playoff series from 1939 through 2007, inclusive, when a team such as Pittsburgh takes a 2-games-nil lead on home ice and wins those two games by six or more total goals, its series record is 69-4 (.945). Ottawa might take collective heart in the fact that, of those four losses in that situation, three occurred in the NHL Preliminary round.

So there you have it, the odds that the sens come back from their deficit are .181, .099, .055, or .000. Conversely, the odds that they will pack it up at the first sign of trouble: .891, .901, .945, 1.000. Leaf fans know where to put their money.