Why Offence is Offensive
by NIH sports correspondent Duff "Twilley" Wilmott
The general managers of the National Hockey League have decided they want to increase scoring. They say they do, anyway, and they've proposed some changes to increase it.
For their sakes, I hope they're being disingenuous. First of all, there is no great demand for increased scoring. NHL games are not characterized by fans chanting "O-ffence, o-ffence."
Secondly, the assumption that defensive hockey is boring is certainly not universally accepted. There are more than enough NHL games these days in which bodychecking is absent (even at a few million bucks a year there's a limit to how many nights a week you can dish out and take that abuse) and they are not enjoyable to watch.
However, I suspect the general managers are being disingenuous. The two measures they are actually putting into effect this season seem unlikely to increase scoring by more than two or three goals a week over the whole league. And the last time they tried to increase scoring it didn't increase.
I suspect the general managers are simply trying to please the sportswriters. Sportswriters are for more scoring because it's an easy way to appear daring and dedicated to the game. If scoring is low, say it should be high. If it's high, complain about the lack of defensive play. If the GMs look as if they're paying attention to the sportswriters, the sportswriters are happy and are nicer to the GMs. Nothing ever changes, but everyone's happy.
But why should the GMs want to keep scoring down? That one's easy.
First, as anyone who has been to any type of team sporting event knows, the fans start to leave when the outcome is obvious. Once a team has a big lead the fans start heading for the exits.
The enjoyment of watching sports comes largely from excitement about the uncertainty of the outcome (this excitement is especially keen if you have money on the game). When that uncertainty disappears, so do the fans. It is least likely to disappear when scores are low. If you want to sell an exciting game, you keep scores low.
Furthermore, the underdog has a better chance when scoring is low. The more goals scored, the more likely the better team is to win the game. That makes the game easier to sell in cities with weaker teams (the cities with stronger teams of course get to have winning teams).
Let's take as examples two hockey teams, one of which is 50% better than the other. What do I mean when I say one team is 50% better? Simply that it it is 50% more likely to score the next goal. Out of every 5 goals it will score 3.
Now let's suppose these two teams are in the playoffs, when every game is played to a decision. If only one goal is scored in a game, then the probability that the better team will score it is 60% (3 out of 5), and the better team's chances of winning are therefore 60%.
if two goals are scored in regulation time, however, the better team's chances of winning increase. The probability that the better team will score both goals is 60% X 60% = 36%, while the probability that the weaker team will score both is 40% X 40% = 16%. That leaves 48% of the games to end in a tie after 60 minutes. Since those games are decided by the first goal in overtime, 60% of them will be won by the better team. So the better team's chances of winning are 36% + (60% X 48%) = 65%.
So by increasing scoring by one goal, the better team's chances of winning have increased by 5 percentage points. If nine goals – a not uncommon total – are scored, the better team's chances of winning escalate to 73%. That is, the weaker team's chances of winning when nine goals are scored are only about three-quarters of their chances when one goal is scored.
In short, increasing scoring reduces the number of wins the fans of the poorer teams get to see their teams win, and it reduces the number of close games, thereby reducing the fun for everyone. A sport which understands these relationships very well is professional basketball. Scoring in NBA games has dropped precipitously in recent years, and the fans turn out in droves.
NHL scoring has decreased even more precipitously than NBA scoring since 1990, mainly because of improvements in goaltending technique and in spite of the improvement of offensive play resulting from the arrival in large numbers of players from former Eastern bloc countries who are more offensively minded (especially the Czechs – who ever thought of calling them Czechs, by the way? Most of them couldn't check their coats). One suspects that the GMs know what scoring means.
So increasing scoring would seem counterproductive. Of course, the possibility that the NHL will do something counterproductive is not negligible, but fans of defence and close games can hope, which is about all that fans of any sport can do these days.
February 2004
Why Offence is Offensive © Coolth, 2004
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