What is it?

The mediocrity index (MEDi) is a measure of a team’s mediocrity over a period of time. I’ve chosen to measure mediocrity from the 2000-2001 season to the 2017-2018 season. To measure mediocrity, 4 factors were used and given different weights:

1- Making the playoffs (P)

2- Getting past the second round (S)

3- Furthest round reached (R)

4- Getting a top 3 draft pick (D)

In the category of furthest round reached, winning the Stanley Cup provided a bigger bonus while in the category of top 3 draft pick, pick 2 had a greater weight than pick 3 and the top pick had a greater weight than pick 2.

Ranking

RANK TEAM MEDi 1 PIT 0.527 2 SJS 0.550 3 DET 0.565 4 PHI 0.604 5 CHI 0.632 6 ANA 0.635 7 OTT 0.638 8 BOS 0.644 9 NJD 0.652 10 TBL 0.660 11 WSH 0.661 12 NYR 0.669 13 STL 0.676 14 MTL 0.678 15 NSH 0.699 16 VAN 0.699 17 LAK 0.705 18 COL 0.708 19 MIN 0.755 20 DAL 0.774 21 TOR 0.793 22 CGY 0.805 23 NYI 0.810 24 BUF 0.815 25 CAR 0.830 26 EDM 0.838 27 CBJ 0.876 28 ARI/PHX 0.876 29 WPG/ATL 0.878 30 FLA 0.906

How does it work?

Missing the playoffs and making the playoffs but being knocked out in the first two rounds (aka the Capitals factor) both add to the score. The further you make it in the playoffs, the more that gets subtracted from the score. Same goes for a top 3 pick. In the end, every season, the most mediocre teams are those who miss the playoffs but don’t get a top 3 pick while the least mediocre theoretically, would be a team that wins the Cup and gets the top pick in the same year.

Although every season at least 10 teams achieve a score of 1, the highest mediocrity score possible, none in the past 17 seasons, have been able to get a score of 0 since winning the Cup and getting the top pick would be a difficult proposition. The only teams to have made the playoffs while simultaneously getting a top 3 pick have been the Ottawa Senators in the 2000-2001 season (originally a New York Islanders pick) and the Boston Bruins in the 2009-2010 season (originally a Toronto Maple Leafs pick). The lowest score for a season has thus been 0.2 for any team that has won the Stanley Cup.

Why do I care?

I don’t personally know you, so I can’t speak to whether you care or not. I can however explain to you why I care. In my opinion and many others’, mediocrity is the worst outcome in the NHL, especially lasting mediocrity. There is currently no quantifiable way to demonstrate this phenomenon, so I decided to find a way to numerically show how mediocre every team has been over the last 17 seasons.

What works about it?

It more or less lines up with where you’d think most teams would be. The most interesting teams are ones that are not where you think they should have been, but if you dig into their performances, it makes sense as to why they are where they are. The most effective way to use the index is mostly to evaluate a franchise’s success or futility. Generally, those with high scores have been those that have been unable to break through with much success without bottoming out to gather prospects to contend in the future. In the same vein, those at the lower end have been those who have bottomed out to build a good team through the draft and then had success with those players (i.e. Pittsburgh, Chicago).

What doesn’t work?

This is obviously not an all-encompassing, be-all and end-all measurement of success. There’s a fair amount of subjectivity in terms of the factors I’ve chosen to include and how I’ve weighed them. Someone else may think some of my factors don’t matter or that there are other factors that should be taken into account. On top of that, it’s very possible I messed up a data point here or there since I did everything by hand. I’ve caught some mistakes myself, so it’s very possible I’ve missed some.

A conscious decision on my part was to omit the 2005 draft. Although of great significance, it didn’t make sense to me to include a draft where there wasn’t a season to determine the odds for who won the lottery.

The other big issue is obviously the timeframe that I have chosen to analyze. 18 years is a very long time, especially considering the lifespan of management in hockey. However, if you take a shorter span, the score doesn’t quite make sense while a larger range would make it even less significant. I more or less arbitrarily chose to just include the 21st century, but obviously the score for a team could easily be skewed by success in the early 2000’s and then continual futility thereafter. But as long as you understand how the score is calculated, you should be able to make these distinctions for yourself.

Why is X team there?

I will be posting short explanations about each team’s score that should clear up any questions you may have about why a team is where it’s ranked.