How Much Does An Ass Kicking Affect A Hockey Team? Math Holds The Answer.
A recent study analyzed the effects of a blowout on an NHL team's performance in the following game and the results are surprising
June is a hard time to be a hockey fan. In a few days, the Stanley Cup Finals are scheduled to start, meaning that unless you’re ride or die for the Edmonton Oilers or Florida Panthers, this year has ended in at least some kind of disappointment. With a maximum of seven games left, a long summer will soon start, with the relative boredom broken up only by what are essentially administrative tasks such as the Draft and free agency.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the games that are left will definitely be exciting. Blowouts are relatively rare in the Finals (although they do still happen on occasion).
When the regular season starts in October, however, the crappy teams will once more be on the schedule. It’s fair to say that, barring some incredible improvements to their lineups during the offseason, squads like Chicago Blackhawks are likely to be on the receiving end of a few shellackings. The good news for their fans, or for gamblers looking for an edge, is that a researcher has definitively proven a common misconception about the effect of getting your ass kicked on the ice isn’t true. In a recent study, Sean Pradhan, an associate professor at Menlo College, showed that getting blown out had no statistical impact on a team’s performance in their ensuing game. It was a natural area of study for Pradhan, who counts himself a fan of a team who just suffered through a season that can only be considered unspeakably awful.
“My colleague and lead author of this study, Ravi Chachad, and I have been lifelong fans of the San Jose Sharks,” he said in an email. “I guess our passion for hockey really sparked our interest in this area of research.”
The study, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living in January, further disproves one of sports’ longest standing fallacies: the hot hand phenomenon.
If you’re of a certain age, you may have fond memories of playing two-on-two virtual basketball against a friend in the classic video game NBA Jam. One of the games most iconic features (aside from the classic declaration of “Boomshakalaka” after a dunk) was the ball turning into literal fire in a player’s hands if they got three baskets in a row. It was a very literal representation of a widely accepted view in sports.
“The ‘hot hand’ refers to a situation where a player (or, in our study, a team) continues to perform well following a previous successful performance,” said Pradhan. “For example, teams with the hot hand would consistently score goals and win games.”
Some recent research has shown that the hot hand phenomenon does exist, but has more to do with a player’s actual abilities and other factors but “even then, the impact of this phenomenon seems to be quite small,” he added.
Now, thanks to Pradhan, we have a bit more information on just how misplaced the hot hand phenomenon is. While it would seem to make sense that a team that gets its ass handed to it would perform badly in the next game, perhaps due to the psychological devastation of seeing their net get repeatedly filled by pucks, that turned out not to be true. Pradhan’s statistical analysis of the games played between the 2005-06 and 2018-19 seasons showed that teams on the receiving end of a blowout - which was defined as a loss by six or more goals - went on to win 50 per cent of the time in the next game.
“After a team blew out another team (i.e., the winning team), they went on to win the next game a little more than half the time at a slightly positive margin,” said Pradhan. “The losing team (i.e., the team that got blown out) won the next game exactly half the time with a near-zero goal differential.”
While these findings may appear to go against the common wisdom, at least one NHL observer found that they aligned with their experience.
“I might even say that the hunger/overconfidence effect comes into play,” said Brian Wilde, a longtime hockey analyst currently covering the Montreal Canadiens for Global Television. “The blown out has something to prove and has a lot of pride, and the dominant one feels complacent and loses their edge. That passes my eye test for sure. I have often thought over the years that the worst thing was when it was too easy.”
Like many studies, the findings aren’t perfect. Pradhan acknowledged that he and his colleagues couldn’t account for every factor and injuries, which goalie got the start and trades may have affected the outcomes of some games. It’s also unclear how much the study can be generalized to cover other sports.
“Baseball via Major League Baseball is tough since the season is so grueling (162 games) and teams play a series of games against one another,” said Pradhan. “The National Basketball Association, however, also plays a season composed of 82 games with similar levels of travel to the NHL. The findings could potentially generalize, but replicating our study in the context of basketball, or baseball for that matter, would be the true test to see if our results hold up.”
As for what effects the study can have in the real world, Pradhan said he hopes the findings can be used as a motivational tool by coaches and players feeling down in the dumps after taking a beating (though he acknowledged he has yet to hear anything directly from the jock world).
There is one other area where the study may be felt. Gamblers are constantly looking for any advantage when placing their bets and those who peruse academic journals (or this Substack page) may have a leg up on oddsmakers, a reality that Pradhan acknowledged.
“That was out of the scope of our project but could be a really interesting angle for oddsmakers and gamblers,” he said. “It’s important for these groups to react appropriately to games following a blowout, regardless of whether they’re considering the outlook for the team that won or lost.”