Performance Under Pressure: Preliminary Evidence from the National Hockey League

Craig Depken, Robert Sonora and Dennis Wilson ()
Additional contact information
Dennis Wilson: Western Kentucky University

International Journal of Sport Finance, 2012, vol. 7, issue 3, 213-231

Abstract: Emotions can have important effects on performance and economic outcomes. This study examines the behavior of professional athletes involved in a dynamic competition in their own natural environment. We empirically analyze overtime shootouts in the National Hockey League in the context of performance under psychological pressure as initially outlined and tested by Apesteguia and Palacios-Huerta (2010) in international soccer. We find no team-level advantage in NHL shootouts for either the first shooting, second shooting, or home team, suggesting that the influence of pressure is not consistent across the two sports of hockey and soccer. However, shot level analysis indicates that on average there is an advantage to shooting second, or equivalently, a disadvantage to being the second goalkeeper. Because there is a much greater natural advantage to the goalkeeper in a hockey shootout than in a soccer shootout, the preliminary results suggest that goalkeepers might perform slightly worse under pressure.

Keywords: sports; sudden death; failure to perform; shootouts; pressure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.fitinfotech.com/IJSF/IJSFbackissueWVU.tpl (text/html)
Full-text download requires subscription from FIT.

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:jsf:intjsf:v:7:y:2012:i:3:p:213-231

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.fitinfote ... IJSFbackissueWVU.tpl

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Sport Finance is currently edited by Arne Feddersen, Babatunde Buraimo, Joachim Prinz and Jane Ruseski

More articles in International Journal of Sport Finance from Fitness Information Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Victor Matheson ().