Senators buck goal differential trend en route to Eastern final Ottawa manages the rare feat of reaching the final four despite having a negative goal differential in the regular season.

In the age of parity in the National Hockey League, it can often be a difficult task to try and identify the true Stanley Cup contenders.

The salary cap and three-point games have seemingly pulled a lot of teams towards the middle during the regular season.

As a result, we are constantly in search for key stats that can help us differentiate the true contenders from the average teams. In the past couple of years, goal differential in the regular season has proven to be an effective indicator of a team’s playoff success.

The last three Stanley Cup champions have had an average regular season goal differential of +38 – with Pittsburgh (+42 in 2016), Chicago (+34 in 2015) and Los Angeles (+30 in 2014) ending up as eventual champions.

So when the Ottawa Senators qualified for the playoffs this season with a -4 goal differential, they were fairly quickly dismissed as legitimate contenders. The Senators had the 18th-best goal differential in the NHL this season, finishing behind non-playoff teams in Tampa Bay and the New York Islanders. But after dispatching the New York Rangers in six games, Ottawa has advanced to the final four.

Keeping true to their regular-season form, the Senators goal differential through two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs is just +1 – despite the fact they have an impressive 8-4 record in 12 games. This is largely due to the fact that Ottawa has won seven of their games by just a one-goal margin – the highest total of any team in the playoffs.

You’re probably wondering: How unusual is it for a team with a negative goal differential in the regular season to reach the conference finals in the Stanley Cup playoffs?

As you might expect, it’s a very rare phenomenon. In the past 20 years, only one other team – the 2010 Montreal Canadiens – was able to advance to the conference finals despite having a negative goal differential in the regular season. That edition of the Habs – who had a -8 goal differential in the regular season – were powered by out-of-this-world goaltending from Jaroslav Halak as they dispatched Washington and Pittsburgh in stunning seven-game series.

But the Canadiens were ousted in the conference finals in five games by the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 – a team that just squeaked into the playoffs on the final day of the regular season. The task will be significantly greater for Ottawa in the next round, as they will face either the President’s Trophy winners or the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Not surprisingly, the Capitals had the best regular season goal differential (+84), while the Penguins (+49) were fourth-best in the league. So no matter who the opponent is, Sens coach Guy Boucher may want to dust off that underdog card, because he’s going to need it. But Boucher can take comfort in the fact that his club just dispatched a New York Rangers team that sported the fifth-best goal differential during the regular season at +37.

If the Senators can actually advance to the Stanley Cup Final, they would become the first team since the 1992-93 Los Angeles Kings to do so with a negative goal differential. Like Ottawa, that edition of the Kings ended up with a -2 goal differential in the regular season – although one suspects that number would have been different if Wayne Gretzky hadn’t missed 39 regular-season games due to injury. The Kings were eventually beaten in five games by the Montreal Canadiens in the final.

Two years prior to that, the Minnesota North Stars made it all the way to the Cup Final against Pittsburgh sporting a -10 goal differential from the regular season. And like the Kings, they also fell short.

No team has ever won the Stanley Cup in the post-expansion era with a negative goal differential during the regular season – a stat the Senators would love to change in 2017. The last time a team was able to accomplish the feat, was the 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs, who won the Stanley Cup despite sporting a –7 goal differential in the regular season.

And yes, this has been such a strange and quirky year for Ottawa that it means their fans can look to the ’67 Leafs for a little inspiration.