Losing one-goal games

This week at Puck Prospectus, I examined whether very poor records in one-goal games carry over from year-to-year or whether there is an element of luck involved.

Here is an excerpt:

In baseball, many times teams that lose a lot of one-run games attribute the result to bad luck and, as a result, expect their luck to turnaround the following campaign. Is the same belief applicable to the game of hockey?

It is an interesting question because in hockey, unlike baseball, you can directly change your style of play depending on the score of the game. So, perhaps teams that lose a plethora of one-goal games fall behind and are unable to put everything together in order to make comeback after comeback. On the other hand, maybe we can just chalk it up to sheer bad luck.

Let’s take a glance at the past four post-lockout seasons to get a better look at whether teams that win/lose one-goal games see those results continue season after season.

Read the entire article here.