Inter-arrival Times of Goals in Ice Hockey

Thomas Andrew C
Additional contact information
Thomas Andrew C: Harvard University

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2007, vol. 3, issue 3, 17

Abstract: Previous studies have attempted to model goal scoring in sports such as ice hockey as simple Poisson processes. Others (Thomas, 2006) have shown that events within the game of ice hockey are better modelled as a Semi-Markov process determined by puck possession and location. I demonstrate that a similarly defined Semi-Markov process model is well-suited to describe the times between goals scored in NHL hockey, and use this to demonstrate that the scoring of a goal has the effect of shortening the remainder of the game by roughly 20 seconds. This is used to improve previous estimates of the value of a goal scored, calculated as a difference in win probabilities at specific time points during the game.

Keywords: hockey; semi-Markov process; hazard function; survival analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1559-0410.1064 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jqsprt:v:3:y:2007:i:3:n:5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/jqas/html

DOI: 10.2202/1559-0410.1064

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports is currently edited by Mark Glickman

More articles in Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().