Last night, as I was watching the Capitals trash Tampa Bay in the third round of the Stanley Cup play-offs….the announcer mentioned that only twice in the last 41 years (or cases) has a team won the third round of the play-offs after loosing the first two games. Tampa Bay was lost the first two games. So, historically, in only 4.878% (say 5%) of the cases has someone come back from loosing the first two play-off games to win. Note that the Capitals did this against Columbus in the first round.
Now, there are seven games in a play-off round. So with five games left, Tampa Bay has to win 4 of the 5 games. So, assuming the teams are equal (50% chance of either winning a game), then the odds of Tampa Bay winning 4 of the next 5 games I calculate as .09375 (mathematicians…please check me on this) or 9%. So if the teams are equal, then Tampa Bay should statistically have a 9% chance of coming back and winning the round. Historically, it has only happened 5% of the time.
Suppose Tampa Bay is the better team. Lets say their odds of winning are 60% for each game, then their odds of winning 4 out of 5 rises to 18.144%. They did win 2 out of 3 games against the Capitals in the regular season, so maybe their odds of winning any single game is really 67%. This is a 26.34% chance of coming back. Let us say they are really good and motivated and have a 75% of winning each game, then the odds are 39.55%. On the other hand, to get to the historical 5% win rate in this situation, then team that is behind had to have around a 42% chance of winning each game.
Anyhow…..not sure what it all means.