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Posted at 1:30 PM EST. 

Minnesota -½ +120 over LOS ANGELES

10:05 PM EST. Regulation only. The Kings may or may not be the worst team in the NHL, but thanks to the division they play in, they have the lowest probability to make the playoffs. Their future certainly looks bright, with many arguing that their prospect pool is the best in the NHL after drafting center Quinton Byfield. But as of right now, they project to be very bad both offensively and defensively, near the bottom of the league in both goals for and goals against. Todd McLellan always seems to get a little bit more out of his teams than he should as far as play-driving goes, but it’s hard to see them being even average in that regard and their goaltending and shooting should still be a major problem even if they are.

Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick were strong players as recently as 2017–2018, but projections are based on results, and the fact that both of them project to be so poor despite the use of a 3-year sample just shows how terrible they’ve hurt their team in both of the past two years. That said, this is more a play on the Wild, our choice for the most undervalued team in the league that few understand just how good they are.

Minnesota’s skaters led the NHL in goals above replacement (GAR) in the 2019–2020 regular season. In other words, their calculations, which isolate team performance by adjusting for contextual factors such as strength of schedule and back-to-backs, and separate the performance of a team’s goaltenders from their skaters, led to the conclusion that if you replaced every single skater on the Wild with a replacement level player (an easily replaced player that falls below the 13th forward, 7th defenseman, or 2nd goaltender on their team’s chart), then their goal differential would drop by a larger number than it would if you did the same thing to every other team in the NHL. To put this all more concisely: by this model, outside of goaltending, the Minnesota Wild were the NHL’s best team in the 2019–20 regular season.

If you’re unfamiliar with goals above replacement, it’s a highly effective model that allows us to improve our player evaluation by isolating a player’s individual contributions from various external factors such as competition, teammates, and usage, and then comparing their contributions to those of a typical replacement level player and determining how much value they’ve added. The model is built from the ground up at the individual player level, and team values are merely aggregated player values, but the statistic is also fine for use at the team level. Since 2007–2008, teams with more regular season goals above replacement have won 60.5% of their playoff series, while teams with higher regular season standings rankings have won only 55.9% of their series, which shows the model has solid predictive power even though it is built to be descriptive in nature. We won’t go into further detail, but it’s a great model that arguably is a better “catch-all” snapshot of a player’s value than any other hockey stat that currently exists.

Now, back to the Wild. It may seem a bit surprising that their skaters ranked first in goals above replacement, considering they also ranked 19th in goal differential and 21st in points percentage. If we assume that the model is valid and accurate — which we’re comfortable doing — then the discrepancy here between model output and real-life standings results can only be explained by two factors:

First, the Wild had far-and-away the toughest schedule in the league, playing back-to-backs every other night against exclusively the league’s top teams.

Secondly, the Wild’s goaltenders were so terrible that they sunk a bona fide Stanley Cup Contender down to 21st place.

According to the model itself, it’s mostly the latter. Their goaltenders ranked dead last with 6.8 goals below replacement. This means that if you took a typical 3rd string goalie and put them in net for the Wild, their goal differential would’ve improved by about seven goals. This is far worse than the second-worst set of goaltenders, which belonged to the Detroit Red Wings and contributed 1.2 goals below replacement. These numbers aren’t exactly easy to reconcile by save percentage; Minnesota’s goaltenders had a combined save percentage of 90.25%, while Detroit’s goaltenders had a combined save percentage of 89.36%. So, how is it that it’s calculated that Detroit had significantly better goaltenders?

The answer lies in shot quality adjustments. Metrics calculates the probability of a shot on goal or missed shot becoming a goal based on various factors such as reported distance from the net (the most important factor by far), reported angle from the net, and game strength to calculate the probability of each shot becoming a goal, and assigns that shot an “expected goal” value based on the probability of it becoming a goal. (To give an example, a dangerous shot with a 35% chance of becoming a goal would have an expected goal value of 0.35.) Their calculations found that the average shot faced by Minnesota’s goaltenders was significantly less likely to be a goal than the average shot faced by Detroit’s goaltenders — so much so that when you adjust for the quality of these shots, Detroit’s goaltenders come out looking far better despite their inferior save percentages. Intuitively, this makes sense. We know that the biggest factor that determines the probability of a shot becoming a goal is distance from the net. We also know that the reported distance of the average shot on goal that Detroit’s goaltenders faced was 32.2 feet from the net, while the reported distance of the average shot on goal that Minnesota’s goaltenders faced was 36.69 feet from the net. So, there you have it: the Wild just need better goaltending, and they’ll be the best team in the league. Right?

Well, not exactly but make no mistake that if the Wild get average goaltending between Cam Talbot,Kaapo Kahkonen and Alex Stalock, they are going to be a tough out. If they get above average, look out. At the end of the day, this might be the NHL’s best defense, they have outstanding talent throughout the lineup and they are going to outplay most teams on a daily basis. Yeah, we’ll take our chances that they beat the Kings tonight.

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