Hockey: Skill vs Luck Comparison between other Sports

[SmellOfVictory]

Randomness is simply a part of hockey and the skills players develop reflect that aspect of the game.

That's exactly the point. As stated in OP, hockey players do not lack skill by any means, and you need skill to play in the NHL; no one would dispute that. The point is that the oucome of hockey, both on a team and individual level, is much more heavily affected by randomness/luck/chance than other sports.

When you have a team where 21 players spend time on the playing surface (as opposed to having a first/second string/etc in games like basketball), when that playing surface is unpredictable (ice), the league is designed to limit the stacking of any one team with too much talent, and the object of the game is not uniformly shaped, you're going to have a lot less influence of the skill of any given player.

 

[JackSlater]

Weird terminology in the video. It is about randomness primarily, not skill. Low scoring games are prone to be affected by randomness a lot more than high scoring games are. In hockey a bad bounce can result in a goal, which is probably ~20% of the scoring in the game. In basketball a bad bounce might cost you 3 points, maybe 2% of the scoring in a game. None of that has anything to do with skill.

 

[Inkling]

Is it "skill" or more "greatest individual ability to influence the game"?

I get his point, I just don't think "skill" is the right word, here -- it seams a bit misleading.

I had the exact same thought watching the video. In hockey you need skill distributed throughout your lineup because you need your whole team during a game while in basketball, you can play a smaller number of more skilled players and you get away with having less skill on the bench. That's a big difference between the sports, and it might increase the variance, but it's not luck.

 

[TJ21]

Luck doesn't exist, so it's impossible to measure something that isnt real against any sort of metric. Like a poster a page back said, it's randomness, and for me, the more skill you have on a team, the more obvious it would seem that more situations would arise that go your teams way. I know the term luck is used often on the boards, but I wouldn't put it up against anything for a comparison.

 

[DearDiary]

Today's Pens vs Rags game was a good example of this. Pens 2nd line hemmed the Rags in their own zone for a while, Rags skate back with a nothing shot and Letang tips it into his own net. That ended up deciding the game, you won't ever see that kind of thing happening in any other sport

 

[93LEAFS]

The other question is, how do you quantify luck. I personally think its a lack of repeatability, which I believe Hockey has more of than Baseball, Football, and Basketball, if teams dressed the exact same line-up 10 times and played. Baseball is probably the second closest. That is probably the nature of the sport, but to many, that could be construed as luck. Just look at gambling lines for the NHL when compared to the NBA and NFL.

 

[authentic]

I had the exact same thought watching the video. In hockey you need skill distributed throughout your lineup because you need your whole team during a game while in basketball, you can play a smaller number of more skilled players and you get away with having less skill on the bench. That's a big difference between the sports, and it might increase the variance, but it's not luck.

Scoring from random bounces account for a larger percentage of goals in hockey than any other sport, and by a fair bit I would say. This would still be the case even if only the most skilled players on each team played most of the game, and that's not even getting into the human goalie factor where they can steal or lose games for a team on occasion.

 

[Thenameless]

There's no question that the "lucky bounce" plays more into sports like hockey and soccer, than it does to basketball. Things like "The Miracle on Ice" in Lake Placid are far less likely to happen basketball.

 

[SmellOfVictory]

Luck doesn't exist, so it's impossible to measure something that isnt real against any sort of metric. Like a poster a page back said, it's randomness, and for me, the more skill you have on a team, the more obvious it would seem that more situations would arise that go your teams way. I know the term luck is used often on the boards, but I wouldn't put it up against anything for a comparison.

Luck and randomness are the same thing. At risk of getting bogged down in semantics, luck is just another word for expressing results that are out of individual control to a great degree. I assume you're conflating the deterministic view of luck (that luck must either remain or change based on a given outcome) with what luck is, which is just the influence of unpredictable factors on a given set of results.

 

[Inkling]

Scoring from random bounces account for a larger percentage of goals in hockey than any other sport, and by a fair bit I would say. This would still be the case even if only the most skilled players on each team played most of the game, and that's not even getting into the human goalie factor where they can steal or lose games for a team on occasion.

Yes, that I can get behind and agree with. Just the point that he seemed to be making about an individual's ability to influence the game (i.e. having your most skilled player on for 80% of the game versus 30%) seemed to be a bit wonky.

The other thing I haven't really grasped but need to think about is the bit about regular season versus playoffs. They were clear that they only looked at regular season in the video, but if hockey were truly a more random sport than the others then why do the top teams almost always win the Cup; it's very rare that you get a Cinderella story in the NHL. The playoffs are inherently less of a sample size than the regular season, so you would think that would increase variance and not decrease it. If you have more variance on top of a sport with the most 'luck' (supposedly), then why are the champions almost always the same top teams? On the other hand, it explains basketball very well as the playoffs were pretty much a foregone conclusion this past season. Also on the other hand, it explains why the President's Cup winner almost always doesn't win the Stanley Cup. Still they said that hockey was more towards luck on their continuum, rather than skill, and something doesn't sit right based upon what we see.

 

[Leafblooded]

Depends if you believe in fate or free will. Some might argue that life as we know it is sheer randomness. Some might think that everything was meant to be. This question is too philosophically nuanced to answer.

Butttt, no shit random bounces effect the game of hockey more than basketball. The puck isn't a sphere, and there is no out of bounds. That's like saying pinball requires less skill than connect four because pinball is more random! Poppycock

 

[GodEmperor]

Depends if you believe in fate or free will. Some might argue that life as we know it is sheer randomness. Some might think that everything was meant to be. This question is too philosophically nuanced to answer.

Butttt, no **** random bounces effect the game of hockey more than basketball. The puck isn't a sphere, and there is no out of bounds. That's like saying pinball requires less skill than connect four because pinball is more random! Poppycock

It's not just random bounces, think of the following things that may happen:

Net knocked off (doesn't exist in other sports)
Player loses stick (doesn't happen in other sports)
Player injured and play continues (don't think this happens in other sports)
5-10 extra tips go your way over a season (much bigger difference than say the NBA where individual scores matter much less)
Player's equipment change hinders his game (exists to an extent in other sports, but there isn't as much total equipment)
Penalty calls consistently don't go your way (although game changing calls do happen in other sports, penalties really alter the game beyond what other sports have to go through, although I suppose balls and strikes would be similar enough)

Those are a few variables that one could list to show how much different Hockey is from other sports, we can envision all sorts of weird timelines, i.e from the Toronto perspective:
A Seguin, Hamilton present....who's coaching/GMing and where did our young studs go?
A Leafs beating Boston present...same question as above, wtf happened after that?
A Sundin/McCabe trade at the deadline post lockout for 1sts....what the hell would that look like

Although you can do timeline creation with all sports, the variables within the game that really are difficult to control are so much greater in Hockey.

 

[Classic Devil]

The best skill a hockey player can have is consistency. There will always be luck and bounces determining when pucks go in or do not go in. But if you play consistent over an 82 game season and playoffs, you'll create more chances for the luck to go your way rather than against you. It is a mental battle and a war of attrition.

This is why I feel Brodeur is the best goaltender of all time. His peak wasn't as high as Hasek's, but he was Brodeur just about every game of just about every year for two decades. He was amazingly consistent for a ridiculously long time.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I hope they didn't use the variance of the wins/losses based off the actual system and adjusted it. Because with the shootout and OTLs the variance for the NHL wins and loss is artificial low.

 

[PunkRockLocke]

This is why I feel Brodeur is the best goaltender of all time. His peak wasn't as high as Hasek's, but he was Brodeur just about every game of just about every year for two decades. He was amazingly consistent for a ridiculously long time.

Agreed, this is a great example. Border is the model of consistency, start to finish of his career. That's what allowed to build such a remarkable trophy case and resume. More impressive than an insane yet short peak, in my opinion.

 

[AUAIOMRN]

What this methodology is actually saying is that NHL teams are more evenly matched than NBA teams - that does not, in my opinion, prove that one sport "rewards skill" more than the other.

 

[CashMash]

You can apply your faulty logic to anything.

Lacing up a pair of skates and shooting a puck is something anybody can do. Strapping on pads and a helmet and throwing a football is something anybody can do. Hitting the golf club on the weekend and hacking it around is something anybody can do. Taking a couple years of a crash course learning how to pilot a space shuttle is something anybody can do (okay, maybe that's outside the scope of this argument). Doesn't mean you're good at it or comparable to professionals who compete at the highest level.

NBA players combine freakish genetics with unparalleled athleticism and the amount of cardio required to perform at the high level they do for 30 or 40 minutes a night is ridiculous. That game of pickup you're playing with buddies at the rec center isn't in the same universe. Each sport has its own unique physical requirements and individual skill sets that must be honed, that doesn't make any of them less impressive than the other but the fact is that in football and basketball you see star players who are able to dominate because of the importance of the positions they play, the amount they play and the importance of unique skill sets among them.

Yes, you can apply it, but it doesn't change that the level of entry can be different? Skill ceiling vs. floor. It's not faulty logic.

 

[x Tame Impala]

It is just saying that skill alone decides games more than in hockey, and hockey is decided by luck more often because of the way the game is played and not because the players themselves are less skilled or talented.

Exactly

 

[Yorkshire Leaf]

Wow! I watched the first 5 minutes, did this bloke used to be a snake oil salesman?

The assumptions made and the mathematics they are try to use are laughable.

 

[Aladyyn]

This is why I feel Brodeur is the best goaltender of all time. His peak wasn't as high as Hasek's, but he was Brodeur just about every game of just about every year for two decades. He was amazingly consistent for a ridiculously long time.

Hašek had better sv% in his 41-year old season than Brodeur ever did.