Why the Stanley Cup Finals Don't Have Shootouts

It's Stanley Cup Finals time, and that means it is time to look at some hockey numbers.

(borrowed from http://www.printactivities.com/Mazes/Shape_Mazes/stanley-cup-hockey-maze.html in the spirit of fair use)

I always say that for most sports I don't care as much about win or lose as much as I care about just seeing a good game of [sport].  I think that holds fairly well for hockey, though in this particular Stanley Cup series I'm cheering pretty hard for my hometown team (the Blackhawks).

Nothing says good game of sport like playing it longer than normal, right?  A blowout in either direction is usually pretty boring, and coming to the end of regulation in a tie usually means just the opposite - a fierce, well-matched game of sport has likely been played to that point.

If you like watching hockey, you've already received a sort of buy two-get one free deal on the first two games of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Blackhawks and the Bruins (and Bruins fans got an extra freebie on that third game).  Two full periods - and some change from two other partial periods - were played outside of regulation in just the first two games.

If you watched those games, but don't really follow hockey a lot, you might have been scratching your head at some point during the second or third overtime.  "When do they get to the point where it's like in the movies and guys just shoot on the goalie?"

Well, we're in playoffs now, so...never.

You see, the rules of overtime play are different in regular season and post-season play.  In regular season hockey, overtime is a sudden-death (i.e. first team to score wins) five minute period, followed by a short break and then a shootout.  In post-season play, you just keep playing sudden-death (but otherwise normal) 20 minute periods until someone scores.

As long as no one scores, the game will simply go on and on.  If you're interested, the longest game of NHL hockey extended into the 6th overtime, and finished with a total of 176 minutes and 30 seconds of ice time.  The game was in 1936 between Detroit and Montreal, and the goal scored 176 minutes into the game was the only goal of the game.  If I could go back in time and watch any one game of hockey, that might just be it.

You may be asking "Yeah, but why make them play so much hockey?  Why not just go to a shootout?  If it's good enough for the regular season it's good enough for playoffs.  Come on."

Well, truth be told, shootouts aren't really good enough for the regular season.  It would appear that they're tolerated simply because they make great ends of movies (i.e. they're fun to watch).

I'd always been told that the reason shootouts aren't in the playoffs is because they are poor predictors of actual skill.  Granted, they measure a particular level of skill (I couldn't go out there and score a shootout goal against...well, probably anyone), but they completely fail to differentiate skill levels within the range of skill being measured (professional hockey players).

Imagine if a basketball game tied after a few minutes of overtime simply came down to a free throw competition, or - more appropriately - a series of one-on-one layup attempts against a team's best defensive player.

Imagine if a baseball game's extra innings consisted of every fielder except the pitcher and catcher taking the bench, and every hit simply being an in-the-park home run (actually, that might be awesome).

Imagine if football's overtime was, well, exactly as they do it now.  Come on, it's not like they want to play extra football.

Anyway, I've always just accepted the notion that this skepticism surrounding shootouts was true.  Given the shortened season this year, though, I figured it would be easy enough to go into the team records and pull some data on who actually does win the shootouts in the regular season.

Given that teams play each other (duh), I was able to cover a large majority of the shootouts that took place this year by looking at three random teams in each division (there are five teams in each division, three divisions in each of two conferences).

This sample produced 83 regular season games which were decided by shootout.

I was also able to determine - based on their standings at the time of the game involving the shootout - which team was favored to win, and which was the underdog.

If shootouts are actually getting at the skill of the team, then we'd expect to see teams with better records more likely to win shootouts (because they've shown themselves to be better at winning games, which is the main established criteria of hockey skill).

I'm not sure I really have any way to continue to hold you in suspense other than this sentence, so here is this sentence that's really just designed to hold you in suspense for the time it takes you to read it.

Of those 83 games, 45 (54.2%) of them were won by the underdog.  Only 38 (45.8%) were won by the team with the better record at the time.

Now, that's not too far from random chance (a 50-50 split), but random chance isn't what we're going for here.  Random chance would be if the NHL simply ended ties in regulation with a coin flip.  If we wanted to show that shootouts are useful they would need to display some bias toward the team with the better record.

Not only are we not seeing a bias toward the winning team, we're potentially seeing a bias against them.

So next time you're watching a shootout in regular season play (or someone you're with complains about lack of shootouts in the playoffs), take a coin out and give it a flip beforehand.  It might actually be a little bit more fair.