Two things on PDO :
1) People act like PDO is a thing that (like a coin flip) regresses to 100.0 over time and anything outside of that isn't sustainable, and that's not the case. If you have a great goaltender and some talented star players, both your save % and your shooting % will be above league average and you'll have a high PDO. TB has driven a 102-ish PDO for the last 5+ years, and it isn't luck. It's because they have elite players and a great goalie.
2) Like any stat, you have to look at the context to evaluate the impact.
If a team had a PDO of 105 and were sitting at 22-2-1 or something in one-goal games and constantly eking out results in games they didn't deserve to win ... yes, there will almost certainly be a big regression in the standings when that unsustainable PDO regulates.
Vancouver is 8-5-3 in one-goal games. Basically a .500 8-8 without loser points. The high PDO has not led to the team winning a disproportionate number of close games.
I tried explaining this to people when the team was 12-3-1 to start the year with a 109 PDO. The team had a +34 goal differential after 16 games but +22 of that was in 3 blowouts they won by a combined score of 24-2. So while the PDO was unsustainable ... it was essentially 'wasted' PDO as it came mostly in blowouts and didn't contribute to winning close games. The team wasn't 12-3-1 because of PDO or luck, they were 12-3-1 because the were outplaying the opposition almost every night. But people who weren't watching the games didn't understand that.
And what I said at that point was that the PDO and goal differential wasn't sustainable, but because those weren't directly leading to wins, that the team's overall record *was* sustainable based on their overall level of play. And that's exactly what's happened. After having a +34 goal differential in the first 16 games, it's +31 in the the next 27 - a drop basically in half - but the team just kept winning.
It's a bizarre thing where if the Canucks had won those three games by a combined score of 8-4 or something instead of 24-2 leading to a much lower PDO but the same record, the masses would consider that record *more* sustainable despite a *worse* overall performance, which obviously makes zero sense. And this is the problem with blindly looking at statistics out of context.
You are kind of cherry picking, though. Those games didn't happen in a vacuum. The stat is looked at in bulk, where the team over time has had a bigger share of puck luck.
The fact they are roughly .500 in one-goal games says little about PDO. With lower PDO they likely lose more of those games, more games that were close would be clearer losses and the big wins would be closer wins.
Yet of those examples you elected to cherry pick only the big wins in order to prop up your argument and get 20 likes from coping Canucks fans.
Also, you're making these condescending remarks about the "masses" like we're a bunch of sheep while all these enlightened Canucks fans, many of whom in this very thread are showing a very limited understanding of the stat in question, have it right with their "the Canucks are different" nonsense.
No, people aren't saying it will revert back to 100, people say it will REGRESS. When and to what number, who knows but it WILL HAPPEN and it WILL AFFECT THE RECORD. Their team is good enough and their record is good enough that it probably won't affect the standings too much but who knows; there's a lot of season left and look what's happening to the other two "locks" in the Pacific right now, or indeed what happened to the cup-or-bust Oilers earlier in the season.
Ironically, you even pointed out that the Canucks had a 109 PDO earlier in the year and what happened when the sample size grew? It regressed. Why? It was unsuitable looking at historical data. It still is, so we can expect it to regress further. Back to 100? Not a chance because that would require their PDO to be exactly equally as bad as it's been good from here on in, and I think we all agree that would be ridiculous. Just as ridiculous as their current PDO in fact.
