NHL, Soccer - Friday, June 5, 2009 5:05 - 5 Comments

Goals are Good

Sidney Crosby and Cristiano Ronaldo are widely regarded as the best individual hockey and soccer players, respectively. But what makes a good hockey or soccer player? Do you want a player who can score first, or who can score last? Fortunately, some new developments in statistics may shed some light on this question.

Jack Brimberg and Bill Hurley of The Royal Military College set out to model the odds of winning in hockey or soccer after scoring first. They calculated the probability of the “first-goal team” winning the match after the first goal is scored based on the number of minutes remaining in the game. Their big break came when they discovered that hockey and soccer follow the Poisson distribution.

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