After Being Shut Out: How Do NHL Teams Fare in the Next Game?

A team gets blanked, the post-game talk turns to slumps and frozen sticks, and the instinct is to fade them next time out. I wanted to see whether that instinct holds up. Across 2,846 NHL regular-season shutout losses from 2005-06 to 2024-25, I tracked the next game: did they win, how many did they score, and did they get shut out again?

The headline answer is short. Shut-out teams won 47.9% of their next games against a rating forecast of 48.2%, a gap that sits well inside normal noise. They were shut out again 6.3% of the time, barely above the league baseline. The rest of this piece shows why I treat a shutout as a box score rather than a signal, and my free ice hockey tips page is where I apply that thinking game by game.

Aftermath · 01Next-game win rates sit on top of the forecast

This chart pairs the rating forecast with the actual next-game win rate, split by how badly the team lost. The overall gap is −0.3 points, against a 95% range of ±1.8, which is effectively nothing. All teams in all games win 50.0% of their next games, so shut-out sides do win slightly less often, but the forecast already expects that because these are, on average, slightly weaker teams.

The bands wobble a little. A 0-1 loss led to a 47.6% next-game win rate against a 49.2% forecast, while a 0-3 loss produced 49.2% against 48.1%. Those gaps point in different directions and every one sits inside its own range, which is what randomness looks like.

My read is that a shutout is very often the other goaltender's night. A hot save percentage over one game does not carry over to the next opponent's crease, so there is no reason the blanked team should be priced as broken.

Aftermath · 02The goal distribution barely moves after a blank

If shutouts signalled a genuine scoring slump, you would expect a heavy pile-up at the low end next game. Instead, teams scored 3-4 goals 39.5% of the time after being shut out, exactly the same share as teams coming off a 5+ goal game. Being shut out again happened 6.3% of the time, against 6.0% for all teams in all games.

The one visible difference is at the top end: 5+ goals arrived 15.8% of the time after a shutout, against 19.2% after a 5+ goal performance. That fits the idea that better attacking sides score big more often, not that a blank does lasting damage.

Aftermath · 03Shut-out teams score almost exactly their usual output

Here each next-game total is measured against that season's average per team. Across all shutout losses the figure is −0.1 goals, and the 0-4 or worse band lands on the same −0.1. Even a heavy defeat, which is partly a blowout group rather than a pure scoring failure, leaves no real mark on the next game's output.

For totals bettors this matters. If a line drifts down purely because a team was blanked last time, the numbers here do not support that move.

Aftermath · 04Venue explains the splits, the shutout does not

The splits table is where the obvious caveat needs stating: these records hold no bookmaker prices, so the forecast column is a rating estimate, and real prices can sit away from it. With that said, the venue rows are the interesting ones. Shut-out teams playing at home next won 51.2% against a 55.0% forecast, while those on the road won 44.7% against 41.6%.

Those gaps of −3.8 and +3.1 lean against the ratings' home edge in both directions. Shut out at home versus on the road makes little difference, at 49.3% and 46.9%, each close to its forecast.

The era split shows 48.9% in the earlier decade and 46.9% in the later one, with fair odds of 2.04 and 2.13. I note the drift but would not build anything on it from samples this size.

Written byErik Lindqvist

I write ice hockey previews from a Scandinavian perspective, with deep focus on goaltending, special teams, and the line matchups that quietly decide most games.

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