Anaheim Ducks Gameday: Holy Ghost of Stats

Anaheim has proven to be one of the best teams in the league this season, and can pretty much just coast in to the playoffs at this point. Aside from a four game losing streak (which luckily didn't have any real impact on our standings) the ducks have barely faced any adversity this season. They've had a remarkable ability to rally come-from-behind games when facing a deficit, and they've managed to steal wins from games where they weren't at their best.

Let's take a look at how we compare to other teams in the league (as of Saturday morning)...

Wins: 3rd

Only two wins behind conference-leading Blackhawks, and four behind league-leading Penguins.

Point Percentage: 3rd

At .724, we're again right behind Chicago and Pittsburgh, no surprises.

Goals per Game: 6th

We take a bit of a dip here with 2.95 G/G, again behind Chicago (league-leaders) and Pens (3rd), and allowing Tampa Bay (2nd), Toronto (4th), and Montreal (5th) to step in between us.

Goals Against per Game: 9th

Ouch. Anaheim's 2.42 GA/G has us ninth in the league, behind both of the other two California teams (Los Angeles just barely edges us out at 2.40, and San Jose is at 5th spot with a solid 2.32).

5 on 5 Goals for/against: 3rd

Right back in the third spot here, but this time we beat out the Penguins, only trailing behind Chicago and Montreal.

Power Play Percentage: 5th

Sometimes our power play looks so horrible that it's shocking we're in the 5th spot, but here we are with a team that is effective 22.6% of the time with the extra man.

Penalty Killing Percentage: 20th

Woof.

Shots per Game: 22nd

Oh god, this is bad, real bad. On one hand, it means we've been taking some really accurate shots and we don't need very many opportunities to be effective. On the other hand, it sure does say a lot about our puck possession and our ability to make meaningful plays. In the playoffs, this will haunt us.

Shots Against per Game: 9th

Not too awful. Our defense is doing a decent enough job preventing shot opportunities, now if only our offense could return the favor and take some shots.

Fenwick Close: 22nd

According to the fancy stat crowd, this is supposed to be one of the best predictors of future performance, and the reason why the strong start of the Ducks' season was impossible to maintain and our wins would stop coming, as we regressed to our teams "true" ability. They didn't, we're still going as strong as we ever were. This is almost certainly due to the season being shortened and there not being enough time for our performance to adjust than it does with Fenwick being misleading.

But since it says we're doing awful and we're not, let's just pretend fancy stats don't matter.

And that's where we stand. as far as today's game...

Prediction: Who cares? We're coasting to the playoffs.