So with the season nearly a third gone, I got to thinking about how insanely good the Devils PK has been. At nearly 95%, the Devils are far ahead of any other team. Any time there is an outlier statistic like that, I always wonder about the dreaded reversion to the mean. So I did a little research

I looked back at the leading PK teams for the full season over the last 10 seasons prior to this one. The results were strikingly consistent. Every single year since the 00/01 season, the NHL leader in PK% was at between 86% and 88%. That is a bit troubling, because it implies that there is no way the Devils can stay close to that pace. Even if we accept that the Devils could have the best PK in the last 10 years, it would be likely to be perhaps 89% at best, a nearly 6% drop from the current rate

That implies that over the remaining 2/3 of the season, the Devils would probably drop off to 86%. Using the 95 shorthanded situations they have been in for 1/3 of the season, that would imply around 3 more goals every 10 games. That could be a huge difference with a team struggling to score and a team that has gone to alot of overtime games.

All the more reason the team must start putting more pucks in the net.