Title: Do professional hockey teams with a two-goal lead lose more often than they should?

Authors: Jack Brimberg; W.J. Hurley

Addresses: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, The Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario K7K 5L0, Canada. ' Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, The Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario K7K 5L0, Canada

Abstract: There is a popular notion that hockey teams blow two-goal leads more often than they should. Hockey experts argue that teams with a two-goal lead tend to revert to a more defensive style of play and do so at their peril. We subjected the claim to National Hockey League data from the 2010 season and found that teams in such a predicament do not lose more often than they should. A possible explanation for the two-goal myth derives from the availability heuristic suggested by Kahneman and Tversky.

Keywords: operations research; sports research; professional hockey teams; two-goal lead; statistics; probability; losing teams; two goals; National Hockey League; ice hockey; goals scored; leads lost.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2012.048869

International Journal of Operational Research, 2012 Vol.15 No.2, pp.226 - 233

Published online: 11 Jan 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article