Michael Lopez, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biostatistics at Brown University, published an article about the National Hockey League in the Journal of Sports Economics which was highlighted in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated:
There are many ways to achieve victory in the NHL. Teams can win in regulation, overtime or a shootout and earn two points in the standings
regardless of how victory is secured. Even when teams lose, they sometimes win — to an extent — by getting one point for falling in overtime or a shootout…
It’s a flawed system that incentivizes teams to play it safe, robbing the sport of dramatic finishes in the third period
while creating artificial parity.
You can read the article written by Matt Gagne and Michael Lopez in Sports Illustrated here, and read the original research article in the Journal of Sports Economics here.
