Anyone who watches ESPN, or listens to sports radio, or reads sports websites knows the amount of time and effort that gets put into analyzing football games and trying to come up with a prediction of who will win. Of course, what you rarely hear from these talking heads is that the team that has the better turnover margin is going to win the game the vast majority of the time. Plain and simple.
That got me thinking, does a similar stat exist in college hockey? I decided to begin the quest by going back to an old debate I had heard once of which is the more important goal, the first goal of the game or the second goal of the game?
To answer that question, I went to last season’s WCHA composite schedule and looked at the box score for every conference game. I compared who scored the first two goals of each game to who actually won the game. Here’s what I found.
First of all, it shouldn’t be surprising that teams did very well when scoring the first two goals of the game. What I did find a little surprising was how much of an advantage it was. Teams that scored the first two goals of the game had a 47-3-3 record, which is good for a winning percentage of 91.5%. It should also be noted that two of those three losses happened very early in the season. So even though it may not seem like it at times, a 2-0 lead in the WCHA is about as close to insurmountable as you’re going to get.
The more interesting stat, in my opinion, is what happened when each team scores one of the first two goals. In situations where the score was tied 1-1, the team that had scored the first goal of the game had a record of 41-26-10, which is good for a winning percentage of 60%. That’s not a mind-blowing stat, but conventional logic would dictate that the team that scored the second goal of the game would have the momentum and would be more likely to go on to win the game. Instead, what this data indicates is that the team that starts out with the lead has the advantage.
If you combine the two together, the team that scored the first goal of the game won 68% of the time, and managed to get at least a tie 77% of the time. The team that scored the second goal of the game only won 56% of the time, and managed at least a tie 67% of the time.
Though there’s not a huge disparity in those numbers and it’s not a very large sampling of games, I do think it shows the important of scoring the first goal of the hockey game.
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3 comments:
Great research. Keep it up. By the way on your other entry: I'm also trying to catch a few Shattuck games this year. Where do you live? For some reason I was thinking you were a Michigan guy, so SSM wouldn't be close.
I've never seen a SSM game, I've heard they're pretty good. At the very least you get a chance to see a potential great player (Z. Parise, S. Crosby, etc).
Thanks USAFA Bulldog. I'm currently living in Mankato, so Owatonna is only about 30 minutes or so away.
Let me know when you're going to a game. I'd love to hear your opinion on some of the players.
Also, totally random, but I couldn't post a comment on your blog, but I also enjoyed a State Fair gyro. Those were good.
I think I fixed my jounal problem. I changed the settings, so I think it should work now.
Yep, I'll definitely let you know. Nice thing about SSM is that they start their season before the NCAAs do. From what I've heard their arena isn't that good, basically just a hole to play in. I'm sure I've been to worse though.
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