If the Canucks don’t win the Stanley Cup this year, it’s not likely ever going to happen with Alain Vigneault as their head coach.

No pressure.

Posted by Red Winger from Sault Ste. Marie on 11/29/09 at 08:14 PM ET

There are few coaches in the NHL who are on their fourth year with a team that have not won the Stanley Cup.  The only two in that group right now are Barry Trotz and Lindy Ruff.  Thus if all teams have the same shot at a cup this year, there is only a 1 in 15 change that one of these coaches win the cup this year.

That doesn’t say that tine is running out.  It says that an artificial group has been defined (coaches with more than four years with a given team who have not previously coached Stanley Cups) which has few members.  Therefore members of that group rarely win the Stanley Cup because they rarely exist. 

It is like concluding that teams with goalies who have a last name beginning with V rarely win Stanley Cups, therefore Florida (or wherever Tomas Vokoun plays) and Washington (Semyon Varlamov) are doomed.  SInce the Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893, only three different goalies with last names beginning with V have won the cup - they are Mike Vernon, Georges Vezina and Roagie Vachon.  Three guys in 116 years.  That is pretty low right?  However, when you consider that only three goalies with last names that began with V have retired and not won cups (John Vanbiesbrouk, Gilles Villemure and Mike Veiser), it doesn’t look bad at all.  Historically 50% of retired goalies who have last names that begin with V have won the cup at least once.

Vigneault joins a group that is less as rare as goalies that have last names that begin with V, but when you calculate percentage of times a coach with more than four years coaching the same team and no Stanley Cup wins goes on to win the cup and calculate the percentage of times that any coach wins a Stanley Cup, I bet you find the four year veteran actually has better odds (as we have weeded out the coaches who weren ot good enough to last very long).

Posted by PuckStopsHere on 11/29/09 at 08:43 PM ET

PuckStopsHere is hereby declared victor of this post.  Flawless victory. (No, seriously though, your analysis is spot on.)

Posted by GregAnnapolis on 11/29/09 at 09:41 PM ET

Geesus, you think too much ...my head hurts

Posted by Red Winger from Sault Ste. Marie on 11/29/09 at 09:41 PM ET

A look at the past 82 Stanley Cup winners shows that only three times has a head coach been with a team for more than four years before winning a Cup.

Not a flawless victory, maybe 98%.  The name for the psychological phenomenon for thinking about the data in this way would’ve iced the cake.

I came here to say I feel like this may be suffering from the “representativeness heuristic” and go about my day, letting anyone who cared enough to look it up to look it up.  TPSH has done a very good job explaining it in depth. 

Is what’s happening really a bit of self-fulfilling, in that ownership fires coaches without success within four years?  There may be two sub-populations of coaches with longer tenures: good coaches that are still being given a shot (as in the subject of the article) and average coaches that have good working relationships with an ownership that isn’t driven enough or impatient enough to fire their coaches for the lack of success.  TPSH may very well be right, in that there is actually a higher rate of success amongst four-year coaches (since truly bad coaches are filtered out by owernship in the first 3 years) compared to the total population of coaches.

Posted by MarkK from Maryland on 11/30/09 at 09:08 AM ET