The Calgary Flames won Game 1 of their Qualifying Round series on Saturday night. While winning one game is a good first step towards advancing, winning the second game is a much bigger step.
Since the 2012-13 lockout season, there have been 105 best-of-seven playoff series contested.
Teams that won Game 1 in a series went on to advance 73 times – 69.5% of all series. But teams that went up 2-0 in their series ended up advancing 44 out of 52 times, increasing their chances of moving on to 84.6%. Every playoff year, there’s usually one team that goes up 2-0 in a series but failing to advance (but it’s usually only one per playoff year).