If 8 people flip pennies, each 3 times... statistical numbers suggest the following may happen:

1 person will flip: heads, heads, heads
1 person will flip: heads, heads, tails
1 person will flip: heads, tails, heads
1 person will flip: heads, tails, tails
1 person will flip: tails, tails, tails
1 person will flip: tails, tails, heads
1 person will flip: tails, heads, tails
1 person will flips: tails, heads, heads

Those are the 8 possibilities of flipping a coin 3 times.

Where am I going with this... OK.
Pretend Heads = Hot.
Pretend Tails = Cold.

Regardless of what has happened in the previous 3 flips... the 4th flip has a 50% shot at being heads, 50% shot at being tails.


Back to hockey.
Most people that know me, know that I am a numbers-based person.
I love looking for trends & stats that can help us forecast/predict.

There are a couple (seemingly) "trends" (?) that I don't buy into:
1. Home/Road point-splits for skaters.
I've played a lot of hockey in my life. Whether you play at one rink or another doesn't matter much for scorers. If you investigate 100 players, you will find somebody who's extreme is home, somebody who's extreme is road. That's just how Gaussian distribution of statistics fall. I put no stock in those stats. Goalies... mmm, maybe a little more. [Goaltenders are mental-cases who could actually perform better based on pressure. ex. Phoenix = No pressure. Their goaltenders do well. Also, some goalie feel "comfortable" at home... and can play better there. Some goalies feel "pressure" at home, due to fan passion... maybe they play worse there. Case-by-case, I could see looking into it.]

2. Hot/cold starts or "month-based" performance.
Again... if you look at 100 people, somebody is going to flip that "Head/Hot" in the month of March 3-years in a row.
Should we assume that the player is going to be HOT again this comin March?


Short answer.
NO - I wouldn't change my valuation of a player because they have some past "trend" of "hot starts" or "cold starts".
Three-or-four years of hot starts is still just 3 or 4 coin flips of "heads"... somebody is going to do it.
There's NO guarantee that they will do it again.