Methodology: How Our NHL Rankings, Goalie Boards and Stats Are Built

How the power rankings are computed

Most power rankings are opinion with a number attached. Ours are a formula, and the formula is four inputs per team:

1. Points percentage, the share of available standings points a team has taken. Weight 40%.
2. Goal differential per game, goals for minus goals against, divided by games played. Weight 30%.
3. Shot share, shots for per game divided by shots for plus shots against per game. Weight 20%.
4. Special teams, power play percentage plus penalty kill percentage. Weight 10%.

The four inputs live on different scales, so each one is converted into a z-score: how many standard deviations a team sits above or below the league average that day. The weighted z-scores are added up, and the power rankings are that total from highest to lowest. Points carry the most weight because they are what a season is decided on. Shot share and goal differential carry the rest because they say how a team is getting its points, and they hold up better from one month to the next.

Early in a season each input is a blend of two seasons. The current number gets a weight of games played divided by 20, capped at one, and last season fills in the rest. A team ten games in counts half of each. After 20 games, last season drops out completely. The weekly move compares today's rank with the most recent saved ranking that is at least seven days old.

Puck line, totals and game shape

Every finished regular-season game is summarized from the play-by-play feed. A win is the final result, overtime and shootout included, and a shootout winner is credited with one extra goal, as the official score does. That means every overtime and shootout game is a one-goal game.

• Covers -1.5 is a team's wins by two or more, divided by all its games.
• Covers +1.5 is every game a team did not lose by two or more, divided by all its games.
• Empty-net goals are goals scored while the feed records no goalie in the opponent's net.
• Margins from an empty net are two-goal-or-more wins that would have been one-goal games without the winner's empty-net goals.

For totals we count goals per game and the share of games with six or more and seven or more. Period figures count goals in the first, second and third periods, with overtime as a fourth bucket, plus how often a lead after one or two periods held. The puck line guide reads these counts team by team.

How shot zones are drawn

Each shot in the feed carries ice coordinates in feet from center ice. We flip them so every team attacks the same net, then sort each shot on goal and each goal into one of six zones. The goal line sits 89 feet from center, so anything past 89 is behind the net. From 54 feet in, a shot within 11 feet of the middle is the slot, and anything wider is the left or right side. Between the blue line, 25 feet out, and the 54-foot mark is the point area. Anything farther out is long range.

Missed shots are left out of the zones, because their recorded locations are the least consistent part of the feed. A zone's shooting percentage is goals divided by shots on goal from that zone.

Goalie starts, rest and workload

A team's starter in a game is the first goalie the feed shows in net facing a shot. The goalie board lists the starter of each team's most recent game, across both seasons, plus how the last five starts were split. Rest is the number of days between that last start and the team's next game, minus one, so a goalie who played Tuesday and could go again Thursday has one day of rest. A back-to-back means the team played the day before.

Save percentage and goals-against average come from the NHL's season goalie statistics. The single-game save percentage is our own count from play-by-play: one minus goals against divided by shots faced with that goalie in net.

Sample sizes and early-season rules

Small samples lie. Our rule is simple: until a team has played 15 games, the boards read last season and label it. Right now the most games any team has played in 2026-27 is 7, so the boards are reading 2025-26. The power rankings follow the separate games-divided-by-20 blend described above, which is why they can move before the other boards switch.

Leaderboards have their own floors. The last-season props boards on player props include only skaters with 40 or more games, ranked per game, and the last-season goalie table needs 25 starts. Current-season leaders use totals with no minimum, since rates over a few games are not worth sorting.

What the numbers cannot tell you

Shot locations are typed in by off-ice scorers in each arena, and some rinks record shots a little closer or farther out than others. All shots are counted in all situations, so a team that draws a lot of power plays looks better in the zones than it would at five on five. Rest is computed from the schedule only: it knows the dates, not the flight from Florida or the time zone. And starters are confirmed by teams on game day, which no feed we use reports in advance.

Injuries, lineup changes and odds are not in the data at all. That is a deliberate line, not an oversight: we would rather show a clean count with a known gap than a guess dressed up as data.