Welcome to the first edition of the CSN power ratings!
It's the TSR rank. As a reminder, TSR is Total Shots Ratio and it's been demonstrated to be the single best predictor of a team's success over the long term. Pretty much everywhere it's applied.
It's still early, but not so early to not have a look.
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1. Los Angeles .696
2. Kansas City .661
3. Montreal .603
4. Colorado .544
5. San Jose .543
6. Portland .531
7. Houston .520
8. Philly . 496
9. Chicago .493
10. Columbus .487
11. DC United .484
12. Toronto .481
12. New England .481
14. Seattle .473
15. Chivas .472
16. Vancouver .456
17. New York .433
18. Dallas .380
19. Salt Lake .349
Again, fairly early. However, some things jump out, particularly at the bottom. Both Dallas and Salt Lake are seen as top teams in the league thus far. Are they doing it with luck?
Let's look at PDO -- the combining of shot percentage and save percentage -- to find out. It's been widely demonstrated that a team's PDO number should be within a couple decimal points of 1.0 over a long period. And deviation above that mark can be seen as a team having unusual good luck; a lot below means unusual bad luck.
The key lesson is teams can only ride/suffer luck so long. It always corrects.
So, if you're a gambler and you see a team that's struggling in the standings and has a bad PDO number you could just have found yourself some value.
The PDO numbers (from luckiest to least lucky):
1. Dallas 1.200
2. Salt Lake 1.100
3. Vancouver 1.066
4. Columbus 1.062
5. Colorado 1.036
6. Toronto 1.025
7. Seattle 1.024
8. Houston 1.011
9. Philly 1.000
10. Galaxy 0.988
10. Chicago 0.988
12. New York 0.984
13. Kansas City 0.964
14. DC United 0.962
15. Portland 0.942
16. Chivas 0.941
17. San Jose 0.935
18. New England 0.912
19. Montreal 0.904
Before we go on a quick point. A guy from Toronto just published numbers showing Montreal to be the least lucky team thus far in 2014 and, likely, the most likely team at the bottom of the table to burst forward based on these numbers.
So can we not suggest selection bias in the comments?
Other than Montreal there are some other takeaways here. Dallas, for one. The Texans are profoundly overrated by almost every subjective ranking system out there. Gamblers should bet hard on a correction.
Portland seems likely for a correction upwards too. DC United also has some intriguing numbers.
As for Toronto...a little lucky (although within a normal range) and a bit over performing so far. Don't plan the parade, but don't panic.