Are Comebacks Becoming More Common in the NHL?

In the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, both the Edmonton Oilers and Dallas Stars had four wins when trailing after two periods, tying an all time record with five other teams. However, this was the first instance where two of these six teams did so in the same post-season. Two other recent teams with four post-season comeback wins when trailing after two are the 2013-2014 Los Angeles Kings and the 2014-2015 Anaheim Ducks. Is this a sign that comeback wins are becoming more common in the NHL? To help answer this question, both regular season and playoff data will be analyzed.

When looking at the regular season, the category of comebacks can be split into three sub-categories; winning percentage when trailing after the first period, winning percentage when trailing after the second period, and winning percentage when trailing first. Note that games that end in a tie are excluded from this analysis, but overtime losses and shootout losses are included.

In terms of win percentage when trailing first, there is not a noticeable change in pattern. The average winning percentage since 1989-1990 is 31.2%, with a low of 26.5% in 1996-1997, and a high of 34.3% just this past season in 2024-2025. However, comeback wins after trailing first has remained consistent.

The more noteworthy stats are winning percentages after the first and second period. As seen by the above graph, both of these metrics saw a significant increase after the 2004-2005 lockout. Beginning with winning percentages when trailing after the first period, the average win rate from 1989-1990 to 2003-2004 was 22.2%, with a low of 20.7% in 1995-1996 and a high of 24.9% in 1990-1991. From 2005-2006 to 2024-2025, the average is 25.5%, with a low of 22.8% in 2021-2022 and a high of 28.3% just this last season in 2024-2025. Since 2005-2006, only four seasons had a lower winning percentage when trailing after the first period than the highest winning percentage from 1989-1990 to 2003-2004.

Comebacks become seemingly more common when looking at winning percentage when trailing after two periods. In the span from 1989-1990 until 2003-2004, the average winning percentage when trailing after two periods was 10.0%, with a low of 6.6% in 1995 and a high of 11.8% in 2002-2003. However, these numbers skyrocketed after the 2004-2005 lockout, where in the span from 2005-2006 until 2024-2025, the average winning percentage when trailing after two periods is 15.1%, with a low of 14.3% in 2021-2022 and a high of 16.7% in 2006-2007. As a result, since the lockout, the lowest winning percentage in this scenario in a single season is still 20.7% higher than the highest winning percentage in a single season from 1989-1990. As a result, this is unlikely to be a coincidence.

To explain why comebacks when trailing after the first period, and especially after the second period, have become more common, it is important to note the rule changes that took place when hockey resumed in the 2005-2006 season. According to NHL Records, the following rule changes took place following the 2004-2005 lockout: “Goal line moved to 11 feet from end boards; blue lines moved to 75 feet from end boards, reducing neutral zone from 54 feet to 50 feet. Center red line eliminated for two-line passes. "Tag-up" off-side rule reinstituted. Goaltender not permitted to play the puck outside a designated trapezoid-shaped area behind the net. A team that ices the puck is not permitted to make any player substitutions prior to the ensuing face-off. A player who instigates a fight in the final five minutes of regulation time or at any time of overtime to receive a minor, a major, a misconduct and an automatic one-game suspension. The size of goaltender equipment reduced. If a game remains tied after five minutes of overtime, winner determined by shootout.”

Of the changed rules, none necessarily give a trailing team more of an advantage compared to the team ahead. Although some of these rules helped increase scoring in general, it goes both ways, where these same rules would not prevent a team that is winning from building on their lead. Although ties were removed from the game, the shootout is more or less a 50/50 chance, where it would not impact the comeback winning percentage in a specific direction.

The most logical reasoning for the increase in comebacks is related to how the strategies have evolved in the NHL, such as earlier goalie pulling, which is further analyze in an article found here, titled “The Rise in Empty-Net Goals”. Additionally, more offensively-based strategies can be utilized with the increased amount of offensive zone space after the rule change, with the idea being that even if these strategies backfire and results in the leading team capitalizing on the lack of care defensively, teams in the past would have lost regardless due to the difficulty to create offense, therefore having a net positive on winning percentages when trailing after two periods in the salary cap era.

While there is no clear answer as to why winning percentages when trailing after the first and second periods have increased over time, it is also important to analyze comebacks in the post-season to see if there are any similar trends. Despite the fact that overall scoring has fluctuated throughout the years, the post-season has generally been a much tighter game, with more conservative strategies being used, resulting in slightly lower scores and more cautious defense.

As seen, there is no trend related to comeback wins increasing or decreasing over time in the playoffs. Interestingly, the average winning percentage when trailing after the first period (23.8%) is lower than the regular season win rate (24.1%), but the second period playoff win rate (14.4%) is slightly higher than in the regular season win rate of 12.9%. However, this may simply be due to the much smaller sample size of games from post-season hockey.

To get a second perspective, an analysis can be done on overall comeback wins in the playoffs, looking at teams that won when trailing at any point in the game; not just wins restricted to when there were leads between periods. Note that this could not reliably be done in the regular season due to the fact that this is a look at total wins and not just winning percentage, where ties that existed in regular seasons prior to 2005-2006 would cause a significant decrease in wins. Also, there was no trend apparent even when just looking at total comeback wins since 2005-2006. But because post-season rules and dynamics have remained consistent, it is fair to make a judgement based off of playoff comeback trends.

All data from the 2020 play-in round is excluded

As seen by the graph, this approach confirms the fact that there is no clear trend indicating a change in comeback victories in the playoffs. This is likely to be explained by the previous hypothesis, where teams check harder and play tighter defence in the post-season, making it more difficult to overcome deficits, especially multi-goal deficits.

After analyzing regular season winning percentages when trailing after the first period, second period, and trailing first, the data indicates that after the 2004-2005 lockout, comebacks became more common when teams trailed during intermissions, but did not see significant change in winning percentages after allowing the first goal. However, when looking at these same metrics in the playoffs, as well as total comeback wins among teams that trailed at any point in the game, whether they scored first or trailed during an intermission, there have not been any notable changes in comeback trends. Unfortunately, there is no clear explanation for these findings, but the most probable explanation is the fact that rule changes in 2005-2006 that created more offensive zone space made it easier for teams to deploy offensive strategies to attempt a comeback if down later in the game. Additionally, general hockey strategies such as earlier goalie pulling practices helped spark more comebacks. However, teams generally play much more conservative and defensively minded hockey in the playoffs, explaining why this trend does not cross over into the post-season.