from Amazon
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Compassionate Referee
We know the theory in baseball that if the umpire calls a close pitch for one team, he may try to even it up for the opposing team on the next close pitch. Hence, the theory of the compassionate umpire.
In hockey, there’s a similar theory, which is commonly accepted, that a referee will try to even-up the penalties. Indeed, teams get mighty upset if they would end up with say 4 fewer power play opportunities than its opponent, because they can’t believe their team would play that much stupider than their opponent.
Phil shows that when a team gets a penalty called, the previous penalty was called 60% of the time for the opposing team. Furthermore, the longer the time since the last penalty, the less this bias exists.
Fascinating stuff.
I’d like to see one more breakdown: did the team score on the power play (or the penalty kill)? Because you would think that if you had a compassionate referee, he would be even more compassionate if the penalty he called led to a goal (and maybe less compassionate if it was a short-handed goal, because, after all, it didn’t “hurt” the penalized team).
So, Phil, can you give us breakdown on whether a PP, PK, or no goal?
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 344 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date