Fundamentally Flawed - Part 2
Okay, last time I talked about why hockey (and soccer) have a huge disadvantage compared to baseball, football and basketball because of the scoring system they use. To recap briefly, you can't go from losing to winning on a single play. Because every score is always worth the same value, you have to go from losing, to tied then to winning - an extra step the other sports don't always require, which eliminates the potential drama of going from defeat to victory in a single glorious instant.
That leads me in to my second problem with the hockey - ties. Now, let me first start off by saying that I am NOT talking about sudden death overtime. Sudden death overtime is awesome, and in the playoffs sudden death overtime NEVER leaves you with a tie.
Let's face it - fans don't like ties. The old adage of kissing your sister is true; you want to see a contest that has a winner and a loser. For decades, however, the NHL was plagued by ties during the regular season. It's a fundamental flaw of hockey - because of the monolithic nature and low frequency of scoring in hockey, a large percentage of games (roughly 1 in every 4) end regulation with the two teams tied.
To address this, the league added a 5-minute sudden death 4-on-4 OT, but ties were still a problem. Recently they added the shootout, and now every game has a definitive winner and a loser. But it's not really that simple... because losing in OT or in a shootout still gets your team a single point. You're not really losing; you're just half losing. Because if you lose 4-0n-4 OT or a shootout, you didn't really lose at "hockey" - you lost at an activity that only sort of resembles hockey.
With basketball, football and baseball, ties are resolved by teams playing the actual sport. (Yes, I know there can be the odd tie in the NFL. But since this only happens once very 8 years or so, it's a statistical aberration that's not worth worrying about.) There is no difference between the game played in regular season overtime or extra-innings and the game played during regulation time.
You don't see football being resolved by playing 8-on-8, or basketball being resolved by playing 3-on-3, or baseball going into extra-innings with both teams agreeing not to play a shortstop. That would fundamentally change the nature of the game; people would laugh at you if you suggested it. Yet that's exactly what happens in NHL regular season overtime when you go to 4-on-4.
Similarly, you don't resolve a baseball tie with a home run hitting derby. Football doesn't end with the kickers taking turns trying to hit field goals while their teammates stand by doing nothing. A three-point shooting contest doesn't decide a basketball game. You can't determine a winner or loser by taking a couple interesting elements of a sport, discarding all the other elements, and then having individual players engage in a skills competition to determine the victor in a team event. Sure, a shootout may be an entertaining exhibition... but it sure the hell isn't hockey, and it's a terrible way to decide who deserves the "W" after 60 minutes of hard-fought action.
Soccer has this exact same problem, of course. Actually, for them it's even worse, as major events like the World Cup are often decided in a shootout. Thankfully the NHL doesn't have that problem in the playoffs. But many major international hockey events still use shootouts to break ties due to scheduling conflicts and time constraints. The reason they do this? Because hockey has a fundamental design flaw that makes ties almost inescapable.
A lack of scoring and a lack of variable scoring values create a statistical model that encourages tie games that can potentially take hours to resolve. This can be great in the playoffs, but nobody wants to watch a triple OT regular season game - the stakes aren't high enough to justify that kind of time commitment. No other sport has to worry about this. Sure, basketball OT can theoretically go on forever. But in practice even the longest NBA overtimes end after 3 five-minute extra sessions. Football ends within 1 quarter (except in those once every 8 years examples). Even the longest baseball games only go over 18 innings once every 15 years or so. But hockey OT can easily push a 3 period game into 5, 6, 7 or more total periods - seems like at least once per NHL playoffs we get a triple OT marathon. (The record is almost 9 full periods - that's 3 games in one!) The implications for the regular season are clear - we'd have at least a dozen double or triple OT games each season. And the average fan doesn't want to watch 5+ hours of hockey for one measly regular season game.
Now, I recognize the value of long-sudden death OT games in the playoffs; if I see an OT game going in May I tune in to watch. But with regular season NHL it isn't the same. Lose in OT? That's okay - you still get a point. Why? Because it wasn't real hockey; it was just 4 man teams playing shinny. Lose in a shootout? Sure, have a free point. It wasn't a real loss - you just failed to get the bonus point for the skills competition.
Most fans don't want to invest 2-3 hours watching a game, only to have it decided by some half-assed version of the sport. Of the big 4, hockey is the only sport that has this problem, because of a fundamental flaw in the game design. Clearly the league recognizes the inherent problems of these OT solutions; unfortunately they're stuck using a sub-standard resolution to try and fix a fundamental flaw in the game itself.
Okay, that's it for this post. In part 3, I'll examine the BIGGEST flaw in hockey. To give you a teaser, I'm going to throw out a phrase we use in the game design industry: measurable statistical granularity. You'll see what I mean by that next week.
Drew
That leads me in to my second problem with the hockey - ties. Now, let me first start off by saying that I am NOT talking about sudden death overtime. Sudden death overtime is awesome, and in the playoffs sudden death overtime NEVER leaves you with a tie.
Let's face it - fans don't like ties. The old adage of kissing your sister is true; you want to see a contest that has a winner and a loser. For decades, however, the NHL was plagued by ties during the regular season. It's a fundamental flaw of hockey - because of the monolithic nature and low frequency of scoring in hockey, a large percentage of games (roughly 1 in every 4) end regulation with the two teams tied.
To address this, the league added a 5-minute sudden death 4-on-4 OT, but ties were still a problem. Recently they added the shootout, and now every game has a definitive winner and a loser. But it's not really that simple... because losing in OT or in a shootout still gets your team a single point. You're not really losing; you're just half losing. Because if you lose 4-0n-4 OT or a shootout, you didn't really lose at "hockey" - you lost at an activity that only sort of resembles hockey.
With basketball, football and baseball, ties are resolved by teams playing the actual sport. (Yes, I know there can be the odd tie in the NFL. But since this only happens once very 8 years or so, it's a statistical aberration that's not worth worrying about.) There is no difference between the game played in regular season overtime or extra-innings and the game played during regulation time.
You don't see football being resolved by playing 8-on-8, or basketball being resolved by playing 3-on-3, or baseball going into extra-innings with both teams agreeing not to play a shortstop. That would fundamentally change the nature of the game; people would laugh at you if you suggested it. Yet that's exactly what happens in NHL regular season overtime when you go to 4-on-4.
Similarly, you don't resolve a baseball tie with a home run hitting derby. Football doesn't end with the kickers taking turns trying to hit field goals while their teammates stand by doing nothing. A three-point shooting contest doesn't decide a basketball game. You can't determine a winner or loser by taking a couple interesting elements of a sport, discarding all the other elements, and then having individual players engage in a skills competition to determine the victor in a team event. Sure, a shootout may be an entertaining exhibition... but it sure the hell isn't hockey, and it's a terrible way to decide who deserves the "W" after 60 minutes of hard-fought action.
Soccer has this exact same problem, of course. Actually, for them it's even worse, as major events like the World Cup are often decided in a shootout. Thankfully the NHL doesn't have that problem in the playoffs. But many major international hockey events still use shootouts to break ties due to scheduling conflicts and time constraints. The reason they do this? Because hockey has a fundamental design flaw that makes ties almost inescapable.
A lack of scoring and a lack of variable scoring values create a statistical model that encourages tie games that can potentially take hours to resolve. This can be great in the playoffs, but nobody wants to watch a triple OT regular season game - the stakes aren't high enough to justify that kind of time commitment. No other sport has to worry about this. Sure, basketball OT can theoretically go on forever. But in practice even the longest NBA overtimes end after 3 five-minute extra sessions. Football ends within 1 quarter (except in those once every 8 years examples). Even the longest baseball games only go over 18 innings once every 15 years or so. But hockey OT can easily push a 3 period game into 5, 6, 7 or more total periods - seems like at least once per NHL playoffs we get a triple OT marathon. (The record is almost 9 full periods - that's 3 games in one!) The implications for the regular season are clear - we'd have at least a dozen double or triple OT games each season. And the average fan doesn't want to watch 5+ hours of hockey for one measly regular season game.
Now, I recognize the value of long-sudden death OT games in the playoffs; if I see an OT game going in May I tune in to watch. But with regular season NHL it isn't the same. Lose in OT? That's okay - you still get a point. Why? Because it wasn't real hockey; it was just 4 man teams playing shinny. Lose in a shootout? Sure, have a free point. It wasn't a real loss - you just failed to get the bonus point for the skills competition.
Most fans don't want to invest 2-3 hours watching a game, only to have it decided by some half-assed version of the sport. Of the big 4, hockey is the only sport that has this problem, because of a fundamental flaw in the game design. Clearly the league recognizes the inherent problems of these OT solutions; unfortunately they're stuck using a sub-standard resolution to try and fix a fundamental flaw in the game itself.
Okay, that's it for this post. In part 3, I'll examine the BIGGEST flaw in hockey. To give you a teaser, I'm going to throw out a phrase we use in the game design industry: measurable statistical granularity. You'll see what I mean by that next week.
Drew
posted by Drew at
11:04 AM
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