After the habs/canes series finished up, my friends and I were debating if it is more likely that a team win the cup undefeated (as carolina was on track to do after the second round) or play the maximum amount of games and win (as montreal was on...

After the habs/canes series finished up, my friends and I were debating if it is more likely that a team win the cup undefeated (as carolina was on track to do after the second round) or play the maximum amount of games and win (as montreal was on pace to do after the second round). I think its an interesting debate because as we saw, the breaks you get in between so many series can make you rusty and therefore its hard to go 16-0 even if you are significantly better than all your opponents. On the other hand the fatigue that would set in and the luck you would need to win 4 game sevens would make going 16-12 very difficult as well. To this date neither has been accomplished. In an attempt to solve this problem i fit a normal distribution to the data of each cup winner’s record since 1987 (when the 4x7 format was introduced) and extrapolated the 16-0 and 16-12 scenarios. This method indicates a 0.034% chance a team would go 16-0 in any given playoff, and a 0.23% a team would go 16-12. I don’t think this method is fool proof but is the best way I could think of. TLDR; I’m interested to hear what other people think about the likelihood of these scenarios ever playing out. The data would suggest winning 4 game sevens is more likely than going undefeated. EDIT: here is an updated graph with the probability distribution assuming you have a 50% chance to win every game. Interesting how it differs from the data. https://imgur.com/a/X9B9Vsv submitted by /u/PlayfulPollution2894 [link] [comments]