Decision Making and Underperformance: Evidence from NHL Shootouts

[AlienWorkShop]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/kykl.12073/pdf

May be of interest to some...

Haven't read through it thoroughly, but the general idea is home teams were allowed to choose whether they shot first or second in the shootout post-05/06. Theory may suggest the increase in choice should improve their outcome, yet home teams have actually seen a decline in their shootout win percentage.

Home teams have increasingly chosen to shoot first, which brings to question what psychological factors are at play. The results here suggest home teams have mistakenly believed they should put pressure on the first goalie/second shooter...

Possible criticisms: the results may be driven by 2010-11 and 2011-12 being outliers (although home team choosing to shoot first generally increased over the time period, so the correlation is there) and shootouts are essentially random and the samples are too small to infer anything just yet. Another couple years of data would be interesting. Increased choice doesn't necessarily have a >=0 benefit in a two-person game too...

Click to read more...

 

[soireeculturelle]

as a contrast, in soccer, it is accepted that teams get a boost from shooting first.

though in soccer, the odds are heavily tilted in the shooter's favor, whereas the opposite is true in hockey.

2 possible lines of thoughts can stem from this: either hockey teams should want to shoot first as well, because shooting first and scoring puts the pressure on the other team, or they might want to shoot second, because getting a save on the first shot (the most likely event) would put them in the lead first.