Tag: good luck

Chiefs wish Kansas City Mavericks good luck in the ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs

The #Chiefs wished the Kansas City Mavericks good luck in the ECHL’s Kelly Cup Playoffs in a social media post on Thursday.

The Kansas City Chiefs may not be the only team to bring the City of Fountains a title in 2024.

On Thursday, the Chiefs wished the Kansas City Mavericks good luck in the ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs as they look to bring the city yet another championship to celebrate.

The Mavericks, who finished with an impressive 54 wins over the course of their 72-game season, have already won the 2024 Brabham Cup. They also set the ECHL record for most road wins at 29, and set their franchise record for most goals with 305 on the season.

Set to face the Tulsa Oilers tonight, the Mavericks are a No. 1 seed in the ECHL playoffs and may prove to have the mettle to compete for the league’s ultimate prize, the Kelly Cup.

Whether they win the ECHL championship or not, though, the Mavericks have had an incredible season, and have caught the attention of the defending Super Bowl champions, which is an honor all its own.

Data suggests Saints were one of NFL’s luckiest teams in 2022

Data claims the Saints were one of the NFL’s luckiest teams in 2022, with opposing receivers dropping more passes than any other squad in the NFL:

Were the New Orleans Saints lucky to finish the year at 7-10? Maybe so. Research from Tom Bliss, the manager of football ops data science for the NFL, found that the Saints benefited from a lot of bounces going their way during the 2022 season. He points to examples of luck like the opposing team dropping would-be interceptions, fumble recoveries, missed kicks and opposing receivers dropping passes. Bliss took each of those stats and tabulated them into wins added per team.

Bizarrely, the Saints ranked high in a lot of those categories. New Orleans led the NFL in opponents’ dropped passes, which added a full +1.15 win to their cumulative total. And they stood out from the pack by a wide margin there, with next-closest being the Jacksonville Jaguars (+0.79). Their final ranking in the “good luck” rankings was seventh-best in the NFL.

However, that freakish performance outweighed the Saints’ more typical performance in other areas. They ranked near or below league average in opposing teams’ dropped interceptions (+0.02), missed kicks (-0.38) and fumble recoveries (-0.18). So if their luck with those dropped passes was closer to normal, the Saints look more like pedestrians than leaders in these good luck rankings.

Here’s the full tabulation from Bliss:

As we can see, the New York Giants were the luckiest team in the NFL last year thanks to good breaks on fumble recoveries and dropped interceptions, while the Buffalo Bills were unluckiest due to so many fumbles getting picked up by the opposing team. Bliss considered fumbles as examples of 50/50 randomness to even the playing field in that category.

Hopefully the Saints can enjoy more good luck next season, but you’d like to think they can figure out enough things within their control to where it doesn’t matter, as was the case for Buffalo, which made it to the second round of the playoffs. New Orleans needs to play better football rather than hope for good fortune in 2023.

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