I find its more beneficial for me to be in a lower speed pool. Maybe the pool was just 'lucky' during that time, but I got a lot more BTC/day on avarage from continuum and lower speed pools vs any other pool, eclipse included, or so it seems so far.
Example, my cashout per day is lowest on deepbit, by a LOT, which has the highest speeds. Cashout on continuum was higher, but less regular, which was fine by me.
Unless something fishy is going on with the larger pools, it just means the smaller ones were lucky during that time. Smaller pools have higher variance, which means you're more likely to get payouts significantly more or less than the average. But the average is the same.