The New York Rangers are on the march with a special teams frenzy that succeeds in covering up the most glaring shortcoming the team may have, their very mediocre Five on Five (5x5) play. No team in eleven years has won the Stanley Cup without 5x5 play substantially better than what the Rangers have played this season.

There have evolved many analytics in recent years but for team performance I still prefer the one showing pucks in the net, that being the regular season 5 on 5 Goals For : Goals Against ratio. This has been a reliable predictor of playoff success over the last ten years. Let’s express this as 5x5 Goals For divided by Goals Against (GF/GA). This ratio even for league leaders is not as large as one may think. Greater than 1.00 is good. Anything above the relatively small 1.20 is unusually high.

For perspective, in the Eastern Conference this season only four of sixteen teams had a 5x5 ratio over 1.10 (Table 1).

Table 1. Eastern Conference rankings 5 on 5 Goals For divided by Goals Against

The related Graph 1 that follows visually depicts the substantial separation of conference leaders from the middle of the pack based on GF:GA. The vertical Y scale shows standings points, plotted left to right across the horizontal X scale of by the increasing GF/GA ratio. The data points will spread from the lower left corner occupied by the laggards to the upper right quadrant where typically only the league’s best will be. Season after season there is a strong relationship between the GF:GA ratio, regular season standings points, and playoff success. Most teams will fall within an oval trendline in that range from lower left to upper right.

Any team substantially above, or above and left, of the trendline may be overachieving and dependent on one factor such as special teams or goaltending. A team below and right may be underperforming with some notable shortcoming.

Graph 1. 5x5 Goals For divided by Goals Against, Eastern Conference 2023-2024

In the Eastern Conference the runaway leaders Florida, Boston, Toronto and Carolina all show typical characteristics of dominant 5x5 play and fall in the upper right quadrant of the graph as expected. The most notable outlier is the President’s Trophy winners New York Rangers, whose middle of the road, 1.01 5x5 play should have placed them around 90 points. As noted, their top 3 Power Play and Penalty Kill provided a significant boost to their finish.

Also of note, the Tampa Bay Lightning with a poor 5x5 ratio of just .91 were vulnerable and overly dependent upon the #1 Power Play of 29%. They were bounced in five games by the balanced play of the Panthers. Washington with a dismal .82 edged into the playoffs with hot goaltending down the stretch and benefitted from the rare tie game, empty net goal over the Flyers that provided the tie breaker edge over the cardiac, third-period comeback kids in Detroit.

Is regular season 5x5 play an indicator of post season success? Yes. In the last eleven years every Stanley Cup winner (“SC1” in Graph 2) has been effective and a Division leader in 5x5 play during the regular season with an average of 1.22. The Cup runners-up (“SC2”) showed a regular season 5x5 of 1.16. Both of these Finalist averages are significantly above the very unimpressive 5x5 play of the current Rangers.

Graph 2. Regular Season 5x5 Goals For : Goals Against, Stanley Cup Champions 2013-23

The remarkable Chicago Blackhawks of the Lockout-shortened 2013 season had the highest 5x5 ratio in recent history of 1.57 on the way to a 132 point pace, maintaining a dominant 1.40 ratio during the playoffs on the way to the Cup.

How important is it to win the 5x5 battles? 80.5%, 48 minutes and 17 seconds, of the 23-24 regular season games were played with 5x5 strength (in 2022-23, 48 minutes 14 seconds). In 2023 playoff hockey that extended to 50 minutes, 51 seconds. The Islanders played the most 5x5 hockey in 23-24, 49’37”, with the WWE entry Florida Panthers the fewest 5x5 minutes, 46’16”.

With 80% of the game played 5x5, extraordinary other factors must overcome the Rangers’ middling 5x5 rating of 1.01:1. The Rangers put that on display throughout the regular season with the #3 Power Play and #3 Penalty Kill, and it has been a huge factor in their 6-0 start to the post season.

In the first round the Rangers’ devastating special teams racked up seven of their 15 goals, with a 40% Power Play, 93% Penalty Kill, and two short-handed goals. The Rangers have riddled the NHL #1 rated Hurricanes Penalty Kill for four quick, game-changing Power Play goals while completely blanking the NHL #2 rated Carolina Power Play on ten occasions totaling 15 minutes of PK time in two games.

The Rangers special teams have been the difference in round two, Carolina having outplayed the Rangers in many categories and outscored them even strength. One could easily envision how the Canes would have won the first two games of this series. But now they must win four of five games with no room for error or killing off their own Power Plays as they’ve done.

Although there is a long way to go, if the Rangers win this series they could very well play the Florida Panthers, a team with a penchant for putting opponents on the Power Play which could pave the path for the Rangers to the Cup Final.

Having one of the league’s leading 5x5 rating is not a guarantee of Stanley Cup success, but no team in eleven years has been successful without it. Can the Rangers continue their reliance on the blistering pace of their special teams all the way to the Cup? History says no. But these are just numbers, the games will be determined on the ice.