Simeon Poisson and the Stanley Cup Finals

Abstract

The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America currently comprised of 31 teams.  Their seasons culminate with the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  The top sixteen teams (eight in each conference) qualify for the playoffs.  The conference champions face off in the final round, known as the Stanley Cup Finals.  The authors show that goals scored per game in the Stanley Cup Finals follow a Poisson distribution.  Using the results of all 438 Stanley Cup Final games played since 1939 (when the Finals became a best-of-seven series), chi-squared goodness-of-fit tests show that the observed distribution of goals scored per game by series winners, series losers, and game losers closely approximate a Poisson theoretical model.  The combined number of goals scored by both finalists and goals scored by game winners do not