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This story, the one written at the halfway point of the first playoff season following the National Hockey League’s Summer of Math, could have gone in one of two directions.

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It might have said, if we were contemplating conference finals that included, say, Calgary and Montreal, that analytics are not infallible. Probabilities are just that: probable. Sometimes a team, like Montreal last season, turns a predictive model on its ear, particularly over an anything-can-happen short playoff series.

But instead the story is going in this direction: math triumphs again.

At its essence, the core of the advanced statistics revolution is that success in hockey is derived from two factors: the ability to possess the puck more than your opponent, and dumb luck. If luck is a wash, then the team that has better puck possession, in the form of shot attempts, is much more likely to win. But someone is always getting lucky. Pucks bounce over sticks, and hit posts, and deflect off legs and arms and butts. Goalies get screened, and guess wrong on breakaways, or guess right on breakaways. The winning dressing room in the hockey playoffs will always, at some level, credit their good fortune. The first game of the second-round series between Chicago and Minnesota turned on a floating shot that Blackhawks winger Teuvo Teravainen threw on goal from the half-boards. Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk, with a typical playoff fencing match taking place in front of him, saw the puck too late. Tough break, said everyone. So it goes.