I Built a Model to Find the Unluckiest NHL Player Ever

Who is the unluckiest player in NHL history? Not the best player without a Cup, but the career where the bounces, the dynasties and the timing went wrong the most. I pulled every NHL season since 1926, scored the 305 best finished careers, built the model one version at a time, then ran it 10,000 different ways. Every team's Stanley Cup odds, expected goals and player analytics: https://spreadsheetsports.com/?utm_so... Chapters 0:00 Who got it the worst? 0:51 Building the pool: 305 careers 1:07 Version 1: great, no Cup 1:20 Version 2: Cups expected vs. won (the backtest) 2:27 Version 3: bodies 2:58 Version 4: the dynasty tax 3:26 Version 5: bounces 4:03 Version 6: circumstances 4:48 10,000 versions of the model 5:34 The final five 5:46 The unluckiest player ever 7:35 The twist: the same trade 8:07 Close How the model works: the pool is Hockey-Reference's top 250 careers in point shares plus every Hall of Famer with 300+ NHL games, with at least half the career after 1926 (active players are left out, because an unfinished career can't be scored). Each career is scored on nine factors: point shares without a Cup; Cups expected vs. Cups won; share of the prime (age 22-31) lost to injury; seasons ended by the eventual champion, with extra weight for dynasties and Finals; series lost in the last possible game, double if by one goal; playoff goals lost to cold shooting and cold goaltending against the team's own regular season; weak teammates; runner-up finishes for the Hart, Norris, Vezina and Art Ross; and bad timing (a team that just traded you wins the Cup). Each factor is turned into a z-score across the pool and added up with equal weights. The Cup model behind "expected Cups" gives every playoff team its fair share of that year's Cup from its regular-season points percentage (a conditional logit). Backtest: I hid one season at a time, trained the model on the other 98 and asked it to call the hidden season from the final standings. Teams it gave about a 12% chance won 11.7% of the time, and across the 305 careers it expected 97 to finish without a Cup; the real number is 96. The 10,000 universes randomise the factor weights, the player pool, the prime window and the team Cup model, and 30% of the time delete a whole factor. The answer finished first in 79.5% of them and in the top 5 in 98.5%. A "greatness x luck" version, where bad luck counts more for greater players, still puts him first in 54.5% of universes, with Ray Bourque second at 21.9%. In 10,000 simulated careers at his teams' real odds, he wins at least one Cup 86% of the time (8,634 of 10,000). Sources: NHL stats API and NHL Records (playoff games, Stanley Cup engravings, award voting runners-up, Hall of Fame list), Hockey-Reference (career point shares; 1979 Game 7 box score), NHL.com, Wikipedia. Quote "I played on great teams. Unfortunately we got beat by better teams at that time." via NHL.com's 100 Greatest Players profile. Footage and audio: CBC Sports (Hockey Night Heroes, Dick Irvin), Hockey Night in Canada 1979 broadcast (Danny Gallivan) via fan archive uploads, NHL (NHL 100 profiles of Marcel Dionne and Ray Bourque), NESN (Hockey Hub podcast, 2024), Sportsnet (Joe Thornton, May 2016), NBC (2011 and 2016 Stanley Cup Finals; 1974 semifinal Game 7) via archive uploads, WCBS Channel 2 Sports (Warner Wolf, March 10 1981), MSG Networks (1972 Stanley Cup Final), WBZ (Cam Neely, 1994), CBC (1995 Red Wings playoff goal) and Flyers archive uploads. Who did I miss? Tell me in the comments and I'll run him through the model. #NHL #hockey #StanleyCup #hockeyhistory #NHLanalytics