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Thunder and Avalanche Go Out with a Whimper in 2026: Is Point Differential a Good Way to Predict Champions?

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar02/06/2026 - 12:51 pm
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Point Differential

The San Antonio Spurs are back in the NBA Finals after a stunning upset over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2026 Western Conference Finals, confirming we’ll have eight new champions in the last eight years. But you may have missed a historic note from the series involving point differential.

The 2025-26 Thunder were trying to repeat after the 2024-25 Thunder set the NBA record for margin of victory (MOV) with an average of +12.87 points. While the 2025-26 Thunder fell short of that, they were still a respectable +11.15 in MOV, good for the 8th-highest mark in NBA history.

However, the top six teams all won the NBA championship that year, and the No. 7 team (1971-72 Milwaukee Bucks) lost in the WCF to the No. 2 team (1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers). That means the 2025-26 season is the first time in NBA history where no team with a MOV above 11.0 points won the championship, and the Thunder are the team that fell on the sword.

The previous record belongs to the 2015-16 Warriors at +10.76, the team that infamously won 73 games and blew a 3-1 lead to Cleveland in the NBA Finals.

Not to be outdone, the 2026 NHL playoffs had arguably a bigger upset in the Western Conference Finals in May. The Colorado Avalanche were the best team all season, had the best record (55-16-11), a championship core with past success, and they were tied for the 9th-most points in a season (121) in NHL history.

The Avalanche also led the league with a +101 goal differential while second-place Tampa Bay was just +57. That +101 goal differential may only rank 37th in all of NHL history, but it’s the 6th-highest mark in the last 40 years for more recent context.

But in facing a Vegas Golden Knights team that had more losses (43) than victories (39) in the regular season, the Avalanche were swept 4-0. They were outscored 14-7 in the series, one of the biggest upsets in NHL history as it’s not like the Avalanche haven’t been a championship contender for years.

Fans love saying “check the scoreboard” to pump up their teams, but point/score differential has long been proven to be a strong indicator of the quality of the team with a very high correlation to team win-loss record.

But how good is point differential at predicting the champion that season? Is it even good, or has it always been a bad predictor? Was it good and has had a rough patch in today’s leagues?

Let’s examine with a four-sport approach at breaking down point differential for the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL. Technically, that’s going to be run differential for MLB and goal differential for NHL, but you get the idea. Points scored minus points allowed. Simple and effective.

Or maybe not. Let’s see. Also, to make things easier from here on out, let’s refer to these teams who led the regular season in point differential as the PDT (point differential team).

Is Point Differential Still Important in Predicting a Champion

The History of Teams Leading the League in Point Differential

We wanted to get some historical data on this, so we took things back to no earlier than 1968 to get a look at how teams who led the four major leagues in point differential fared that season at winning the championship.

These are the four starting points we used:

  • MLB: Goes back to 1969, the introduction of the Divisional Era in the playoffs as most postseasons in MLB history before this were just the World Series. We excluded 1994 as the strike cancelled the postseason.
  • NBA: Goes back to the 1970 playoffs from the 1969-70 season. Originally wanted to go back to the NBA-ABA merger with the 1976-77 season but didn’t like seeing that gap in data compared to the others, so going back to the point right after Boston’s dynasty under Bill Russell ended felt like a good place. The ABA merger was supposed to happen that year anyway.
  • NFL: Goes back to the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, only missing the first four Super Bowl seasons.
  • NHL: Goes back to 1968, the start of the expansion era when the league wasn’t just the Original Six anymore. Excluded the 2004-05 season that was cancelled fully for a lockout.

The following chart shows the cumulative success rate for teams who led the league in point differential that year where success was winning the championship and failure was not.

Cumulative Championship Rate for No. 1 team in Point Differential

You can see the NBA (orange) has fared better at producing champions than the other three. Though, they all start normalizing in the 1980s once the sample size was starting to build up, and all four have a downward trend as time goes on, meaning fewer of these regular-season dynamos are finishing the job for championships.

However, you can also argue there is a difference in losing the Super Bowl vs. getting bounced in the first round of the playoffs. So, we wanted to include a chart for how these teams fared in the postseason with the caveat that there weren’t always four rounds in each league for these time periods, and the NHL in particular loves to change the names of their rounds.

But generally speaking, we kept it equal to whether a team got past the first, second, third, or final round. Just for reference, here are the six outcomes these teams had:

  • Won Champ.: Team achieved its goal of winning the championship (NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, World Series, Super Bowl).
  • Lost Finals: Team lost in the final championship round (NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, World Series, Super Bowl).
  • Lost CF: Team lost in the Conference Finals, or the round before the final championship round (NBA Conference Finals, NHL Conference Finals, League Championship Series, Conference Championship Game in NFL).
  • Lost Semis: Team lost in the second round of the postseason (NBA Conference Semifinals, NHL Second Round/Semifinals, League Division Series in MLB, Divisional Round in NFL).
  • Lost R1: Team lost in the first playoff round (NBA First Round, NHL First Round/Quarterfinals, MLB Wild Card Series, NFL Wild Card).
  • No PO: Team missed the playoffs entirely (will only apply to MLB where playoff spots have been scarce for most of history).

Since the number of total teams in each league were so similar (range of 56-58), we decided against showing the percentages in the table for less clutter to read.

Note: In the event of a tie in point differential, better record was used to decide the No. 1 team. If they were still tied like in the 2017 NFL season when the Patriots and Eagles were both 13-3 with a +162 differential, then the better playoff scoring differential leading up to the Super Bowl was used, which was won by the Eagles, who then defeated the Patriots 41-33 behind MVP Nick Foles.

LeagueTeamsWon Champ.Lost FinalsLost CFLost SemisLost R1No PO
NBA5723519730
NHL581471215100
MLB561412141114
NFL56178111910
  • The NBA has the greatest championship success rate. The NBA PDT wins championships 40.4% of the time, outpacing the NFL (30.4%), MLB (25.0%), and NHL (24.1%).
  • NBA teams also have by far the best record when they get to the final championship round, posting a 23-5 (.821) record in the NBA Finals, so double ouch for OKC losing to the Spurs. MLB teams are only 14-12 (.538) in the World Series, NHL teams are 14-7 (.667) in the Stanley Cup Finals, and NFL teams are a respectable 17-8 (.680) in the Super Bowl.
  • A whopping 47-of-57 NBA teams (82.5%) get to at least the Conference Finals (third round), compared to 56.9% in the NHL, 64.3% in the NFL, and 71.4% in MLB.
  • NHL teams have been bounced in the first round 10 times, which is double the other three leagues combined, and it’s still more when you add in the four MLB teams who missed the playoffs back when there wasn’t a bigger tournament (10 vs. 9).

This isn’t earth-shattering news as it jives with the general feelings about the postseasons in the NHL and NBA, but it’s always good to put some numbers to things. The NBA is known for not having as many upsets because it’s hard to outplay a superior team in a best-of-7 four times given how many possessions are in NBA games.

Meanwhile, the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs are notoriously difficult to advance through. It’s a grueling march, you’re going to have to win some one-goal games, you’ll probably need to win some overtime games, and you can’t be expected to blow your way through the competition to 16 wins. That’s why we see the most first-round exists in hockey where scoring is much lower and variance/puck luck can be very high. One crazy bounce and your season could be over.

But historically speaking with these numbers, you could predict 1-in-4 winners of the World Series and Stanley Cup just by picking the team with the best point differential in the regular season. You’d get 3-of-10 right in the NFL’s post-merger Super Bowl era and 4-of-10 in the NBA since 1970.

That’s not bad but given the likely high betting odds for these teams, which include a lot of high seeds (like the Thunder and Avalanche were), that’s probably not a great return on investment if you just bet on the top PDT before the playoffs start.

But those are also the historical numbers. Are we seeing a bigger drought in modern times for these teams not winning championships, or when was the sweet spot for this leading to titles? We’ll look at that next.

(Photo by Justin Ford/Getty Images)

Let’s give each league a look with the NFL having the most recent success story. We’ll also try to explain why it might be harder today for such teams to finish the job, looking past the obvious factor for all four that the regular season and the postseason are two different beasts. You’re not padding the stats against some of the worst teams in the league in the playoffs.

NFL

The Seahawks had the best point differential (+191) in the 2025 NFL season, and they won the Super Bowl. That ended a 7-year title drought for such teams.

The peak was in a period that astute NFL fans should expect it to be in 1989-1999 when elite teams often won in blowout fashion, and those were the teams winning most of the Super Bowls. Six of the 11 titles went to the top team in point differential in those seasons, including Super Bowl winners like the 1989 49ers, 1991 Redskins, 1994 49ers, 1996 Packers, 1997 Broncos, and 1999 Rams. Dominant teams.

But even that came after a stretch in 1976-1988 when just 2-of-13 champions led the NFL in scoring differential (1984 49ers and 1985 Bears). So, the NFL’s never been too keen on regular season scoring differential leading to playoff success, but that’s also with the one-and-done nature of the postseason. More upsets are likely if you only have to lose one time to end your season.

It’s also no surprise that the dominant period of these teams winning dried up shortly after the salary cap took effect in 1994. A team like the 1996 Packers already made their big move before that in getting Reggie White in unrestricted free agency, and a team like the 1997-98 Broncos actually were penalized for cheating the salary cap to pay their roster, and the 1999 Rams just struck gold with Kurt Warner taking over, drafting Torry Holt, and getting a reenergized Marshall Faulk from the Colts to create the Greatest Show on Turf.

Since 2000, only 6-of-26 (23.1%) PDT won the Super Bowl, which is down from the 11-of-30 (36.7%) rate for 1970-1999.

NBA

For the NBA, things have usually gone the best for the PDT relative to the other three leagues. But you also can see the results look cyclical and fall in line with the shape of the NBA at the time:

  • In the early 1970s, the PDT was 3-0 at winning the title in 1970-72 thanks to some dominant years from the Knicks, Bucks (young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), and the Lakers in 1972.
  • But once those teams aged out or fell off, you had a real parity era in the 1970s where no one ended up repeating until the Lakers in 1987-88.
  • The PDT was just 1-for-10 at winning the title in 1973-82 as only the 1977 Trail Blazers, led by Bill Walton, got it done.
  • But then the PDT was 5-0 in the NBA Finals in 1983-87 with the 76ers coming through in 1983 before giving way to your annual battles between the Celtics (won in 1984 and 1986) and the Lakers (won in 1985 and 1987).
  • Similar to the NFL, the 90s were a good time for top-tier teams as the PDT won 6-of-10 titles in 1991-00 with five wins for Phil Jackson-coached teams (four Chicago, one LA) and the first title for Gregg Popovich and the Spurs in 1999.
  • Then after the 2008 Celtics made it 3-of-4 years for the PDT with some wins by the Spurs mixed in there, the Big 3 era took over the NBA, and we had a 5-year drought for the PDT in 2009-13 where only the 2010-11 Miami Heat reached the Finals where they lost in an upset to the Dallas Mavericks.
  • Then there was another 3-of-4 era for the PDT in 2014-17 that would have been 4-for-4 if not for the 2016 Warriors blowing a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals to Cleveland.
  • But reminiscent of this era with no teams repeating since the 2017-18 Warriors, we’ve seen the PDT go just 2-of-9 since 2018 with only the 2023-24 Celtics and 2024-25 Thunder finishing the job. In fact, they’re the only two PDT to reach the NBA Finals in the last nine years as this era closest resembles the mid-to-late 70s.

What makes the NBA harder to win today? It’s not like the regular season doesn’t matter. You still have a No. 2 seed taking on a No. 3 seed in the NBA Finals in 2026. But teams may approach the playoffs far more seriously with load management and how many minutes they choose to play their stars than they will in the regular season today.

More than that, the game has just become much more volatile with the explosion in 3-point shooting. Teams are coming back from huge deficits at record rates. No lead feels as safe as it used to, and we’ve also seen road teams post a winning record (19-16) in Game 7 ever since the 2016 NBA Finals. Home teams used to win 75-80% of Game 7s in NBA history before this last decade.

Throw in the new CBA changing the salary cap rules with apron limits and harsh penalties for going over that threshold, and building a superteam could be really hard now. Even drafting a team with high lottery picks in successive years the way the Spurs have (and the Thunder in 2022) could already be dead in the water as a strategy with the NBA announcing new anti-tanking parameters for the NBA draft lottery.

It’s hard to say where the league is headed and if dynasties are truly dead, or if Victor Wembanyama will win three or four titles before the 2030s. But right now, things are much more competitive on a yearly basis, and don’t discount the impact injuries to star players have had on the postseason the last decade.

MLB

Baseball is admittedly not my bag, and I could see run differential being a little less useful in a 162-game season than it would be in these other leagues. If you pound a team’s worst pitcher 14-1 on some hot summer day in July, then lose 2-1 the next day to their ace and 3-2 to their second-best pitcher the next game, I’m not sure that +11 in a 3-game series is that useful for predicting your future.

But Bill James, the father of sports analytics, basically got the ball rolling decades ago with his formula for Pythagorean wins to account for how many games you’d expect a baseball team to win based on runs scored and runs allowed. It’s not a worthless stat at all.

It just hasn’t proved to be very successful for postseason outcomes even in a league where you don’t have to go through as many teams or win as many games to win a championship.

The only time the PDT won back-to-back World Series was in 1975-76, those great Cincinnati Reds teams led by Joe Morgan and Pete Rose. They also had Ken Griffey Sr. and Johnny Bench.

But World Series success for the PDT has been pretty sporadic going back to the late 1960s. They were just 3-for-22 (13.6%) at winning the World Series in 1990-2012, a period that included the steroid-induced home run craze with Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds (among others) in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Since the 2013 Red Sox won, the PDT has won 4-of-13 World Series. The Dodgers pulled it off in 2024 after adding Shohei Ohtani to a loaded roster. But run differential has never been a great tool to predict MLB playoff success. The best you could say was in 1975-89, 6-of-15 (40%) teams won the World Series.

There are MLB rumors about a salary cap proposal in the works, but good luck with that getting passed any time soon. Still, repeats were rare in baseball in the 21st century before the Dodgers made the Ohtani move. That might push some to get moving on an actual cap.

NHL

It is a hell of a grind to get through the Stanley Cup playoffs in this era where you need 16 wins in four rounds. Scoring has creeped up to over 3.0 goals per game in the post-COVID era, but it’s still down from the averages in the 1970s and 1980s where teams like Montreal, the Islanders, and Edmonton were winning four Cups in a row or nearly going on five-peats. Scoring was closer to 4.0 goals per game in that era.

But the Avalanche’s defeat this past month is what got me interested in this topic in the first place, along with the Thunder’s loss. Historically, the NHL teams that win the most games in a season have been terrible at winning the Stanley Cup, and the same can be said for teams who do well in goal differential.

In fact, ever since the NHL moved to an 82-game season 30 years ago for the 1995-96 season, of the top 17 teams who had a goal differential of at least +80, just one of them won the Stanley Cup (a great Avalanche team was tied at 10th with +86 in 1995-96), and only one more (2001 Devils) even got to the Cup where they lost in seven games to the Avalanche.

That’s a ton of playoff struggle for teams that dominated the regular season on the scoreboard. It wasn’t always this way either:

  • From 1968 to 1989, the PDT won 9-of-22 Stanley Cups (40.9%).
  • Then there was a 9-year drought in 1990-98 before 1999 Dallas (thanks, Brett Hull “No Goal”) through the 2013 Blackhawks (stunned the Bruins in Game 6) meant 4-of-14 wins for the PDT.
  • But since the 2014 playoffs, only the 2024 Florida Panthers got to and won the Stanley Cup as the PDT in the last 13 seasons.

So, the NHL is definitely carrying the flame for this being the toughest era to be a PDT merchant. At least we can say 1-in-8 NFL teams have won the Super Bowl since 2018, 2-in-9 NBA teams won the Finals since 2018, and 2-in-9 teams have won the World Series since 2017.

But 1-for-13 in the NHL is rough. That just goes to show the bounce of the puck can be random, and playing flashy offensive hockey in the regular season may not translate much to the playoffs where you have to be physical and win ugly games. Get ugly goals. Survive overtime marathons. Avoid or find your own hot goalie who is playing on his head. Some recent playoff changes have also been questionable in seeding and the paths to the Cup for teams with better records.

But that unpredictability is also part of what makes the Stanley Cup playoffs so rewarding when your team has success. The Avalanche may go down as the 1990s Atlanta Braves or 2000s Indianapolis Colts of this era in the NHL if they never win another Stanley Cup.

What Kind of Teams, Point Differential Wise, Are Winning Championships?

More than 3,500 words in, we’re kind of only halfway through the story as the other half is what kind of teams are winning championships these days as far as point differential goes.

But we’re actually going to quickly run through this as our final section as we were more interested in the PDTs like the 2026 Thunder and Avalanche who fell short in the playoffs.

It is a fair question on the point differential for championship teams over time. We thought we’d start with a fun chart that visually shows where every champ ranked each year in point differential in the regular season. See if you can spot the 2011 New York Giants (hint: they’re the only team higher than 15th). Normalizing this to account for the change in the number of teams would help, but we’re okay with this for now as it’s not the main takeaway today.

Point Differential Rank for Champions, 1968-2025

Average Point Differential Rank for Champions, 1968-2025:

  • NBA: 2.91
  • NFL: 3.71
  • NHL: 3.93
  • MLB: 4.16

Some notes:

  • No surprise the NBA has the highest average ranked champion (2.91) as only the 1994-95 Houston Rockets, during a repeat run, finished 11th, the only champion not in the top 8.
  • Every NFL winner was in the top nine until the 2007 Giants (13th), 2011 Giants (19th), 2012 Ravens (11th), and 2015 Broncos (10th) brought the score down with those Manning brothers and a flatliner in Contract Year Joe Flacco working some late-game magic those years for unexpected runs. But the last 10 NFL champs have all ranked in the top six.
  • Every MLB team ranks at least top 15 with the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (No. 15) the lowest ranked winner after an 83-78 regular season.
  • Every NHL team was in the top 8 until the 1995 New Jersey Devils were No. 10 in a 26-team league in a 48-game season. You didn’t see another champion ranked 10th until the 2005-06 Carolina Hurricanes, a year after the lockout ended. Alex Ovechkin’s only Cup win for the 2018 Washington team is the lowest-ranked winner at No. 13, then the St. Louis Blues were only No. 12 a year later, and Florida was No. 11 a year ago.

Finally, here’s a little histogram showing the breakdown of the champions by point differential. Note that the NHL has the same number of winners who finish No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3-5 (14 each).

RankNFLNBAMLBNHL
#117231414
#2156914
#3-512191914
#6-10971012
#11+3143

As it turns out, the regular season isn’t irrelevant after all. You still usually need to rank high in scoring differential unless you have a Manning brother at quarterback or an uber-talent like Hakeem Olajuwon, Alex Ovechkin, or Albert Pujols leading teams that took a lot of cracks at a title and finally broke through once or twice. In fact, four of those players won exactly two rings and the one Cup for Ovechkin.

Regular-season juggernauts failing in the postseason is not a new concept. The 1942 Chicago Bears were 11-0 with an average margin of victory of 26.5 points, an NFL record that still stands today. They lost the 1942 NFL Championship Game 14-6 in Washington. Some payback for 73-0 two years earlier.

But it is always fascinating when these teams don’t come through, and after the Avalanche and Thunder in 2026, those are two great examples that add to this legacy of coming up short.

For what it’s worth, here is where the final teams left standing in 2026 for the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals rank in point differential:

  • Hurricanes: No. 3 (+55)
  • Golden Knights: No. 12 (+22)
  • Spurs: No. 2 (+8.30)
  • Knicks: No. 5 (+6.33)

But with the Knicks having the best scoring differential (+19.4 points per game) through 14 playoff games in NBA history, we’ll see if they can use that dominance in the most important time of the year to power through and win this series against a great, young San Antonio team.

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar02/06/2026 - 12:51 pm