Skating on thin ice: rule changes and team strategies in the NHL

Anurag Narayan Banerjee (), Johan Frans Maria Swinnen () and Alfons Weersink

Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics from University of Southampton, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences

Abstract: In an effort to stimulate a more exciting and entertaining style of play, the National Hockey Association (NHL) changed the rewards associated with the results of overtime games. Under the new rules, teams tied at the end of regulation both receive a single point regardless of the outcome in overtime. A team scoring in the sudden-death 5-minute overtime period would earn an additional point. Prior to the rule change in the 1999-2000 season, the team losing in overtime would receive no points while the winning team earned 2 points. This paper presents a theoretical model to explain the effect of the rule change on the strategy of play during both the overtime period and the regulation time game. The results suggest that under the new overtime format equally powerful teams will play more offensively in overtime resulting in more games decided by a sudden-death goal. The results also suggest that while increasing the likelihood of attacking in overtime, the rule change would have a perverse effect on the style of play during regulation by causing them to play conservatively for the tie. Empirical data confirm the theoretical results. The paper also show that increasing the rewards to a win in regulation time would not prevent teams from playing defensively during regular time.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-spo
Date: 2004-01-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/33785/1/0401.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Skating on thin ice: rule changes and team strategies in the NHL (2007)
Working Paper: Skating on Thin Ice: Rule Changes and Team Strategies in the NHL (2006)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:stn:sotoec:0401

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics from University of Southampton, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Chris Thorn ().