hockey Archives - Page 7 of 9

Winter Olympics: All About Ice Hockey

To prepare for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia which begin on February 6, 2014, Dear Sports Fan is running a series of previews of Winter Olympics events. So far we’ve profiled the Luge, Skeleton, and Bobsled.

All About Ice Hockey

ovechkin olympics — The hopes of Mother Russia rest on Alexander Ovechkin and his teammates.

How Does Ice Hockey Work?

In Ice Hockey there are twelve players on the ice at a time: three forwards, two defencemen, and a goalie on each team. The goal is to shoot a small, vulcanized rubber disc into a six foot by four foot net. It’s harder than it sounds. For one thing, the goalies, who are enthusiastically padded, helmeted, and armed with a thick stick, a rectangular blocker, and a glove which resembles an oversized baseball mitt, are preternaturally quick and able to block over ninety percent of the shots that get through to them. Defenders are adept at taking the puck away from attackers or often removing the attacker from the puck by hitting them with a shoulder or a hip.

Although there are some real differences between NHL hockey and Olympic, they’re not as big as people will make them out to be. The biggest difference is the size of the rink — NHL rinks are 85 by 200 feet, Olympic rinks are 98 by 210 feet. This has the effect of favoring speed over strength and discipline over risk-taking. It makes crisp passing a better strategy than skating with the puck. Hockey in the NHL is notorious for permitting players to fight with virtually no penalty to their teams. Olympic hockey has none of this — but with rare exceptions, neither do the playoffs in the NHL.


As much as it pains me to include these, here are the highlights from the 2010 Gold medal game between Canada (victors) and the USA (losers):

Why Do People Like Watching Ice Hockey?

So Many Reasons: About a year ago, I wrote a post all about why people like hockey. Among my favorite are “45 seconds,” and “you can see the puck.” Check it out!
Toughness: I also answered the question, “how tough are hockey players?” The answer? Plenty tough but you knew that already.
The Host Wants It: Of all the events at the Olympics, the one that means the most to Russians by far is the men’s ice hockey gold medal. In an interesting ESPN the Magazine article, Brett Forrest quotes a manager at the state-owned contracting company which built the olympic stadiums. This manager says, “Why do you think we built all this? If we lose, they should shoot everyone.” It’s not clear if he’s joking.

What Are the Different Ice Hockey Events?

There’s a gold medal to be won by the men and the women. That’s it. No fancy events, just ice hockey. The tournament is a little complicated though. Both genders start in groups of four — three groups for men, two for women. There is a round-robin tournament and in the men’s bracket, the group winners plus the second place team with the best record advances to the quarter-finals. The other eight teams are paired off and play a single elimination game to determine the other four teams to advance to the quarter-finals. From there, it’s a single elimination tournament. On the women’s side, the four highest ranking teams start out in one group and the four lowest in the other. All four of the top ranked teams advance to the quarter-final round but the top two teams get a bye while the bottom two teams in the top group have to play the top two teams in the bottom group to qualify for the semi-finals.

It’s frankly just about the most complicated way you could possibly design a tournament for twelve or eight teams.

How Dangerous is Ice Hockey?

Surprisingly not that dangerous. Yeah, the puck is going to knock out a few people’s teeth and maybe break a jaw. Sticks can cut faces or break wrists, but compared to the catastrophic knee injuries of downhill skiing or the spectacular crashes in the sledding sports, ice hockey is relatively low risk. The fluidity of the game keeps the contact to a minimum. Concussions are the boogyman of the sport but in a short tournament like the Olympics, there aren’t likely to be too many concussion stories (partially because players and teams are likely to hide any concussions from view) unless a major player is injured.

What’s the State of Gender Equality in Olympic Ice Hockey?

This is a hard one. It’s obviously not equal — there are four more male teams than female teams — but it’s hard to blame the Olympics here. The outside ice hockey world is dominated by the all-male NHL where the most talented male players in the world can make millions of dollars honing their skills. There are a few women’s professional ice hockey leagues but not at nearly the same scale. Women’s rules differ in a couple obvious ways: they must wear full face-masks and they are not allowed to body-check their opponents. This last rule must be enforced with something of a blind-eye though. I’ve watched women’s ice hockey and it’s still pretty rough.

What are Some Fun Olympic Ice Hockey Stories?

Old to Young, Selänne to Määttä, the Olympics is a time to meet budding stars like 19 year old Finnish defenseman Olli Määttä and bid a fond farewell to legends like fellow Finn Teemu Selänne who will be playing in his sixth Olympic Games. It’s a time to re-visit players like Czech Republic forward Petr Nedved who retired from the NHL in 2007 but who, seven years later could still, according to teammate Jaromir Jagr, be the “best player on the team.”

It’s fun to see long-time NHL teammates like Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin play against each other and long-time rivals like Blackhawk Patrick Kane and St. Louis Blues David Backes play with each other.

Important Links:

The official ice hockey schedule.

NBC home-page for US TV information.

Women’s ice hockey begins on Feb. 8 and ends with the gold medal game on Feb. 20. Men’s ice hockey begins on Feb. 12 and ends with the gold medal game on Feb. 23.

What is the Winter Classic Hockey Game?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is the Winter Classic hockey game? Should I watch it?

Thanks,
Sam

— — —

Dear Sam,

The Winter Classic is the name given to an NHL regular season game scheduled on New Year’s Day with a special twist: it’s played outdoors. This year’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be televised on NBC at 1 pm ET. The game will be played on a rink constructed in the center of the University of Michigan’s football stadium, nicknamed “the big house.” The USA Today writes that 107,000 people are expected to attend, which would break the record for attendance at a hockey game. There’s lots of reasons to watch, even if you’re not a hockey fan. Here are a few of them:

The Winter Classic Makes Professional Sports into a Game

An argument I hear from some of my friends who prefer college sports over professional ones is that making a business out of a game ruins the fun of the game. Well, for one day, at least, the Winter Classic transforms hockey back into a game. NHL players are from all over the world but most of them grew up in Canada, Scandanavia, or Russia, and many of them grew up playing outside on frozen ponds as well as inside on rinks devoted to youth hockey leagues. Listen to what some of the players have to say about playing outside:

“As soon as everyone walked in it was like a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds in here” — Red Wings Goalie, Jimmy Howard

“I got chills coming into the building. You grow up playing on outdoor rinks as a kid… it’s going to be a special game to be a part of… it’s going to be an experience I’ll never forget.” — Maple Leafs defenseman, Dion Phaneuf

It’s a regular season game that counts for the standings, but it’s also a throwback to childhood for many of the players and a ton of fun. Like that NFL game between the Eagles and the Lions a few weeks back, when the players are having fun, their joy actually comes across through the television and augments your viewing experience.

The Winter Classic Isn’t a Classic, But It’s Becoming One

The “classic” in Winter Classic is more aspirational than it is a reflection of reality. The first Winter Classic game was played in 2008, so next to some other elements of the NHL like the 121 year-old Stanley Cup (the NHL Championship trophy,) the game is in its infancy. The NHL has done a wonderful job with it though and I would venture to say it’s on its way to becoming a classic tradition. For starters, there’s the deal the league made with HBO to film a four episode season of their sports documentary series 24/7 about the two teams who will play in the Winter Classic. The show is a great lead-in to the game and has at times created its own miniature stars. There’s also an alumni game the night before the Winter Classic that brings back legendary (or just old) players from both teams who get to skate with each other on the outdoor rink. The 30,000+ fans who watched and the players who participated love the chance to relive the past.

The last clever part of the game is that the NHL reached into the sports schedule in just the right place at the right time. New Year’s Day was traditionally dominated by College Football bowl games. As the college football bowl schedule became more and more crowded (one could say bloated) over the last ten or fifteen years, the schedule started creeping deeper into January. The Rose Bowl and Tostitos Fiesta Bowl are still on New Year’s Day but begin later, at 5 pm and 8 pm ET. The other BCS (most important) bowl games are played on Jan 2, 3, or 6. The NHL cleverly swooped in right as New Year’s Day was starting to open up to other sports programming.

The Winter Classic is a Beautiful Sight

An outdoor hockey game can be stunning to watch. The teams always wear uniforms designed just for the Winter Classic. This is obviously a merchandise selling tactic but they also tend to be bolder in color than the normal jerseys, optimized to look good outside. The organizers of the game pick their locations carefully to create stunning tableaus, and there’s always the chance of falling snow to push the images even farther. Here are some photos from Winter Classics, past and present:

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Enjoy the game,
Ezra Fischer

Sports is for Lovers

I know, I know, Virginia is for lovers is the line, but three articles popped out at me recently that made me think that really Sports is for lovers too! One is the story behind sports blog Deadspin’s “Favorite Sports Photo of 2013.” The other one, found by another sports blog, The Big Lead, is an obscure scientific study investigating the legend (or reality) of a baby boom in Barcelona exactly nine months after a dramatic soccer victory. The last is a bonus collection of great hockey hugs!

San Fran Kissing — This photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice went viral.

The legend of baby booms nine months after events is common story. The study made reference to the 1965 blackout in New York but I can remember other stories following events like the olympics, big blizzards, and even the election of Barack Obama (although that one, at least, seems to not have been true.) The event these scientists studied was the goal Andres Iniesta scored in dramatic fashion to send Barcelona to the Champions League final. The Champions League is a tournament where the best teams from each of the national leagues in Europe play each other for continental bragging rights. Their conclusion?

We may infer that—at least among the target population—the heightened euphoria following a victory can cultivate hedonic sensations that result in intimate celebrations, of which unplanned births may be a consequence.

That’s some great writing, guys! I love scientific studies of lay subjects!

Might lay also have been the operational word in the story behind the wonderful story of two San Francisco 49ers fans kissing to celebrate their team’s victory in last year’s NFL playoff semifinals? A gentleman never tells — and in this case, both of the people captured in the photo were gentlemen! Photographer Deanne Fitzmaurice writes that the wonderful response the photo received in the days after she took it, “made [her] realize we have gained some ground in terms of acceptance and broader thinking.”

When was the last time you were so happy?

To put the cherry on top of our sports-love-fest, enjoy Yahoo’s hockey blog, Puck Daddy’s “Top 10 Hockey Hugs of 2013.” It’s just great! My favorite is this one between Hurricanes Jeff Skinner and Jay Harrison but there are nine more good ones to check out. Enjoy!

What Does it Mean to be Mathematically Eliminated?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does it mean to be “mathematically eliminated” from something?

Thanks,
Will

There’s nothing worse as a fan than having your team mathematically elminated

— — —

Dear Will,

“Mathematically eliminated” is one of those phrases that you hear often in sports but not in too many other contexts. A team or player that is mathematically eliminated cannot win or qualify for something in any of the possible permutations of future outcomes. This can happen within a game, within a season, or within a tournament or playoffs. You’re probably hearing it a lot now because the NFL season is in its 16th of 17 weeks and teams are being mathematically eliminated left and right. Let’s explore some of the common forms of mathematical elimination.

Mathematically eliminated from qualifying for the playoffs

A team is mathematically eliminated from the playoffs when no possible permutation of wins and losses in all the remaining games in a season result in them qualifying for the playoffs. This is a surprisingly high bar. For instance, with only two games remaining, the 6-8 Pittsburgh Steelers are still alive for a playoff spot according to CBS. What would have to happen for them to qualify? According to the Altoona Mirror, the Steelers need “about 10 things to happen” and the chances of them all happening are around 100 to 10. They detail all of the necessary dominoes here. Stranger things have happened, for sure, but it certainly stretches the imagination to think that all ten of the items are going to happen just the way the Steelers need them to to make the playoffs. One could say they have been plausibly eliminated but as long as there is a single path for them to make the playoffs, the team and their fans will keep hoping.

Other forms of mathematical elimination — shootout edition

Although the phrase “mathematically eliminated” is almost only ever used about the playoffs, as explained above, there are other types of mathematical elimination in sports. A shootout is one example. In many hockey and soccer leagues, if a game is tied the teams play timed overtime periods. If it is still tied after that, the game is decided by a series of one-on-one contests between a player and a goalie. This is called a shootout. The shootout is arranged like you or I would play odds-and-evens or rock-paper-scissors. In the NHL it is a best of three, in Major League Soccer and international soccer, it is a best of five. Both of these contests work in frames — first one team goes, then the other, repeat. This leaves the door open for mathematical elimination within the shootout. If a team has scored more goals than the other team has remaining shots (in hockey, a team would have to score the first two with the other team missing the first two. In the longer soccer shootout, there are more ways for this to happen,) it’s impossible for that second team to win. In this case, the game is over. The final shots cannot possibly have an effect on the outcome of the game, so they aren’t taken.

Other forms of mathematical elimination — playoff edition

The same logic found in the shootout is also used during the best out of five or seven game series found in the NHL, NBA, and MLB playoffs. Earlier this year, we answered the question, “what is a sweep?” A sweep is when a team wins the first three games of a five game playoff series or the first four in a seven game series. In either case, this is a decisive victory because the winless team doesn’t have enough games in the series left to have any chance of winning the majority of games. They are mathematically eliminated from the playoff series. Like the shootout, the final games of the playoff series are not played because they could not possibly have any affect on the outcome.

Other forms of mathematical elimination — end of game edition

Mathematical elimination can also happen during a game in some sports. Baseball games and tennis matches are organized like little miniature playoff series or shootouts. Tennis matches are organized into best-of-three or five set contests. Each set is organized into best of thirteen game contests. In each of these layers, if a player mathematically eliminates their opponent by winning seven games or two or three sets, the theoretical remainder of the set or match is not played. Baseball is roughly the same. The contest is divided into innings that each have a first half (or top as it’s called) and second half (bottom.) The away team bats in the top of the inning and the home team in the bottom. In the ninth and final inning, if the home team is winning at the end of the top of the inning, the game is over. There is no way for the road team to score any runs in the half of the inning when they are in the field, so there is no reason for that half-inning to be played. They are mathematically eliminated from the game.

Football is perhaps the most curious sport when it comes to in-game mathematical elimination. Football isn’t organized into innings or frames or sets and matches. It’s one continuous game but a wrinkle in the rules makes it possible for a team to (more or less) be mathematically eliminated. In football, the clock either runs or doesn’t run between plays based on the outcome of the play. If there is an incomplete pass, a player runs out of bounds with the ball, or there is a penalty, the clock stops. When a player is tackled with the ball within the boundaries of the field, the clock keeps running, and only a time-out can stop it. If a team is winning AND they have the ball AND the opposing team has no time-outs left, the team with the ball can simulate being tackled on the field by snapping the ball to the quarterback and having him kneel down. This keeps the clock running for up to 40 seconds between each play and a team with the ball can do this three times consecutively. Teams use this strategy as a form of mathematical elimination. If there is less time left in the game (40 x 3 = 2:00) than a team can waste by kneeling, the game is effectively over.

This is really only an almost mathematical elimination because the team with the ball could mistakenly fumble the ball during the snap and if the other team picked it up, they could have a chance of winning. Teams on the losing side of the football game almost never even try to make this happen because it’s so unlikely that it seems lacking in common and professional courtesy to shoot for it. In my memory, the only coach to instruct his team to go for this was former Rutgers head coach, Greg Schiano. Trust my alma mater to foster this type of radical (and rude) thinking! All jokes aside, mathematical elimination is a tricky thing for sports leagues to figure out because it undermines a basic motivation for teams and players: once you have been mathematically eliminated, what is the purpose of continuing to try? This problem is most common when teams have been eliminated from the playoffs during a season and, because the order they get to draft players for next season in is set in inverse (or roughly inverse) order of their record in this season, they have an incentive to lose as many games as possible. This is called tanking and is a scourge to the sports world roughly equal to the flu in the normal world or sarcoidosis on House.

It’s a scourge for another post though, so until then, happy holidays!
Ezra Fischer

Sports Style, Retro and Encyclopedic

One of the consequences of sports and sports teams being so well known by such a large percentage of the population, is that their colors, uniforms, and logos become fertile ground for cultural artifacts that refer to sports in one way or another. A few weeks ago, in a post about the controversy over the name of the NFL team, the Washington Redskins, we linked to a contest a design company had run to develop new logos for the team. Here are three other projects that use the language of sports for stylistic purposes.

As found on Deadspin.com, this compendious poster showing the history of the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) is obviously a work of great devotion. His wrestlers are simple figures with cube-shaped heads that seem to evoke the character heads from the video game Minecraft. Professional wrestling isn’t really a sport, in my mind, but it shares many elements of sport and people who follow it are a lot like sports fans. Creator Scott Modrzynski has also done a lot of work creating foogos or logos made of food. One of my favorites is a deconstructed s’mores version of the Pittsburgh Penguins logo. It’s truly remarkable! And while the foogos are too perishable to buy, some of his other work is for sale here.

Sticking with hockey, and also found by Deadspin.com, here is a set of “sprites” representing the 30 NHL hockey teams plus the now defunct but still remembered fondly, Minnesota North Stars. These images are free to download. A sprite, as I discovered on wikipedia, was a shortcut used commonly in the early days of computer graphics to create a character that could be moved around on top of a background image without having to rebuild the background constantly. There is a set of comics that use sprites as characters for stylistic reasons but also because (again) it’s easier that using characters and backgrounds that have to be rebuilt for each image. One of the most popular of these comics used sprites from the video game Megaman. It’s these characters that artist, Adam4283 emulates when creating his set of hockey players.

Our last find is a set of T-shirts sold on Skreened.com with simple, 8-bit style representations of NFL team helmets on the front. The unnamed creator of these shirts left a message explaining that “If you feel yourself being transported back to the days of Tecmo Bowl, don’t be alarmed…that was the idea.” Tecmo Bowl was one of the first, and still one of the most loved, football video games ever. To get a sense of how popular it remains, there’s a youtube video of someone playing the game that has received over 1.6 million views since being posted in 2006. These shirts are a clever homage to the game.

There’s a few shared elements in all three of these products. All of them mash-up well-known sports visuals with video-game graphics. All of them evoke an earlier time. And all of them would make a great gift for a sports fan in your life!

Why do Some Sports Play Through Bad Weather and Others Don't?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do I always hear about baseball games being delayed or rescheduled due to a light rain and yet soccer games continue around the world in a downpour?

Thanks,
Jesse

Sport, baseball. Hardest material, a wooden bat. Plays through rain? No.

— — —

Dear Jesse,

Thanks for the question! It’s true that sports react differently to the elements. I’m tempted to try to explain this culturally. I’m not the biggest fan of baseball, so it would be fun to bash them for not playing in the rain. A more fair explanation would probably explain that weather affects the trajectory of balls and that this is much more dangerous with a small, hard ball traveling at 95 miles per hour than a big soft ball flying at 35 miles per hour. What is most interesting to me is trying to explain the general phenomenon of why some sports play through bad weather and others don’t and if possible, coming up with a rubric that explains why.

There seem to be two or three simple rules that we can abstract to to explain how each sport deals with weather.

If the sport is played inside, there should almost never be a weather related delay.
The harder the hardest substance used in normal game-play is, the less likely the sport will be to play through bad weather.

Let’s see how these work in practice.

Pro or College Basketball, Volleyball, Boxing, Hockey, Ping Pong — all played inside and all safe from weather delays.

Soccer, Football, Rugby, Cross Country Running — all played outdoors and the hardest material involved is no harder than a soft, inflated leather ball. Their surfaces are all grass or dirt. The only weather that will stop these games is a lightning storm in the direct area of the game.

Golf, Baseball, Tennis, Cricket — all played outdoors and the hardest material is significantly harder than leather. Golf has metal clubs and hard resin balls, baseball has wooden bats and hard leather balls, tennis is played on concrete with fiberglass rackets, and cricket has wooden bats and a hard leather ball.

These rules work pretty well to predict whether a sport will play through bad weather or not with only a few exceptions. You may have noticed that football is in the play through the weather category despite its helmets being much harder than an inflated leather ball. Two possible explanations for this are that historically the helmets were made of soft leather or that because the helmet is attached to the body, its danger is not modified by the weather. Of course if we allow the historic state of sports to enter into the equation, we’d have to admit that tennis used to be played only on grass and clay and that the rackets used to be made of wood. Then again, women’s tennis attire once “included a bustle and sometimes a fur” according to one history of tennis. Basketball’s treatment of weather is modified by its setting. If you are in an outside basketball league, played on concrete, games will be canceled if it is raining. Cycling admittedly breaks this rule entirely. They ride in the rain even though their bikes are made of fiberglass and the roads are made of road. I can only explain this by saying that cyclists are a little crazy and that no rule is perfect.

These rules should help you if you ever need to know whether your tickets to a sport are in danger of being rained out or if you decide to invent a new sport and want to set reasonable weather expectations.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What's New for the '13-'14 NHL Hockey Season?

The NHL Hockey season starts tomorrow with games in Montreal, Edmonton, and Chicago. For nine out of every ten sports fans, this will have about as much impact on their lives as missing one quarter of a regular season football game because they had to run out to the store to get some pickles. The fringe popularity of hockey can be seen clearly in the low importance levels the sport receives on our daily and seven-day almanac forecasts. For the hockey fan though, it is a big day! Hockey fans have many reasons why they love hockey and the start of every season is a time when fans of all teams can be excited and optimistic about their team’s potential… even the Florida Panthers. The NHL is known to be one of the most flexible and quick-reacting leagues when it comes to tweaking the rules to fit the needs of their players, owners, and sponsors. A couple new rules this year highlight this characteristic.

No More Jersey Tucking

Not a new rule technically, the NHL has decided to start enforcing a rule against a player tucking in his jersey which has been part of the rulebook for 50 years. It doesn’t take long to realize that despite the head-fake towards explaining this rule through a ref’s easier identification of the player from behind, that this rule is all about the official sponsors of hockey. The makers of hockey pants (heavily padded) realized long ago that they could get some free advertising by putting their logo on the area that is exposed when a player tucks his jersey. No more!

If you take off mine, I’ll take of yours.

Fighting with Helmets, Visors, or None

For years the most hotly debated topic about hockey in the general media has been the place of fighting in the game. In our post, Why Do People Like Hockey, the seventh reason was “Blood (and Consent.) There are two new rules that affect how players will fight this year.

Players who fight this year, in addition to the normal five minute penalty for fighting, will be given an additional two minute penalty if they take their own helmet off. You might be wondering why a player who is about to get into a bare-knuckle fist-fight on ice would take his own helmet off. Hockey is governed by a highly ritualized set of unwritten rules. There’s a big section of this code that pertains to fighting. For instance, a fighter will not fight a player who isn’t a fighter during the normal course of play but, if a non-fighter makes a dirty play, he’s likely to be challenged by a fighter on the other team and he’s got to fight back. Players who fight a lot have more in common with fighters on other teams than they often do with the skill players on their team. So it’s probably no surprise that they don’t wear visors because a visor is likely to break the hand of whoever is fighting against them.

This year is the first year under a new collective bargained agreement between players and owners that requires new players to wear visors on their helmets that protect their eyes. Joe Haggerty explains that while this rule is meant to protect injuries, it may also cause some injuries for players who are determined to fight:

“Guys have been fighting long enough and punching enough guys in the helmet that your hand is a big, calloused club. You’re used to that. Even when guys don’t have visors on, you’re still hitting a lot of helmet. It takes more area away from the face where you can make contact, so it will be a learning curve.”

The solution? Until the league outlaws fighting all-together, the players will find their own solutions. In the preseason, Krys Barch and Brett Gallant found their own solution. They took each other’s helmets off before beginning to throw punches! David Singer of hockeyfights.com (yes, that exists) commented that this was “Victorian era honor. The Code. A ridiculous loophole on display.” Which is more ridiculous though, the response or the rule? There’s a set of hockey players that make their living partially through fighting. Unbroken hands are a job requirement and punching a visor or helmet too hard is a good way to lose a place on the team; one that, once gone, may never be regained.

What Does Games Back Mean in Sports Standings?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does games back mean in sports standings? And how can a team be a half game back?

Thanks,
Greg

— — —

Dear Greg,

That’s a great question! Games back can be a confusing concept. Games back is a metric that attempts to show how far behind a team is, controlled for the number of games they have played. A team can be a certain number of games back from another team or from a position in the standings. In both scenarios, the target is moving. Games back is a concept that confuses many people who follow sports religiously so showing an understanding of this concept gives you a simple way of flashing your sports expertise, even among sports fans!

On the first day of a season, Team A beats Team B. Team A’s record is now 1 win and 0 losses. Team B’s is 0 wins and 1 loss. Team B is behind Team A in number of wins and in games back. So far those are the same thing. On the second day of the season, Team A plays Team C and wins again. Team B doesn’t have a game. Now Team A’s record is 2 wins and 0 losses and Team B’s record is still 0 wins and 1 loss. Team B now has two fewer wins in the standings but they are not two games back of Team A. This is because Team B has played one fewer game and the games back metric tries to control for that. Games back controls for unplayed games by counting them as one half of a win. You may hear these unplayed games called games in hand, so just remember that while a game in hand may be worth two in the bush, it’s only worth half a game in of games back. Team B is said to be 1.5 games back from Team A.

As the season goes on, this metric becomes a little harder to calculate in our heads like we just did for Team B and Team A. Wikipedia has a simple calculation for games back and though I don’t exactly understand why it works, I believe it works. It’s Games Back = ((Team A’s wins – Team A’s losses) – (Team B’s wins – Team B’s losses))/2. In our scenario, that’s ((2-0)-(0-1)/2 which simplifies to 3/2 or 1.5 games back.

In addition to calculating how many games back Team B is from Team A, it’s also common to express games back relative to a position in the standings. Two common ones are games back (or behind or out of) first place or the last team that would qualify for the playoffs. In this case, the calculation is the same, it’s just done by comparing Team B to whatever team represents that place in the standings. If today Team A is in first place, Team B would be 1.5 games out of first place. If tomorrow Team C, D, or E^[1] is in first place, the calculation would be done between their record and Team B’s record.

Before we leave this topic, let’s look at some real standings as of today in Major League Baseball. The WCGB column stands for WildCard Games Back. The way baseball playoffs work is that the three division winners all make the playoffs automatically and then the next two teams with the best records make it as well. These two playoff spots for non-division winners are called Wildcards. The WCGB column is calculating the number of games back a team is from getting that second and last wildcard playoff spot.

Right now the Indians are in the last playoff spot so they are zero games back. They are the target. The Rays have played the same number of games as the Indians and have one more win and one fewer loss so they are said to be +1 games back. Don’t worry about how stupid that sounds, this means they are a game ahead. The Rangers have also played exactly the same number of games as the Indians. They have one fewer win and one more loss though, so they are 1 game behind the last playoff spot as represented currently by the Indians.

We have to go all the way down to the Mariners to find a team that is an uneven number of games back. If you add their wins and losses, you see that the Mariners have played 159 games compared to the Indians’ 158. That explains the .5 in the games back column. The Indians have 18 more wins than the Mariners but because they have a game in hand, they are given an extra .5 when calculating how far back the Mariners are compared to the Indians.

Data visualization guru Edward Tufte uses sports standings to show how much data can be packed into a simple table and remain understandable (even to dumb sports fans is the unspoken ellipses that I hear) and why making a chart for any fewer than a few hundred data points is usually not necessary. As a devotee of his, I’m happy you asked this question. Hopefully this post has made all those tables in the sports section a little easier to read!

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

GO TEAM E!!!↵

Stanley Cup Popcorn, an Explosive Hockey Gift

Hockey’s championship trophy, the Stanley Cup, is the best trophy in sports. It’s giant, it’s shiny, and it reeks of tradition. In our post about why people like hockey we wrote that the summer after players win the cup:

“each player gets a day with the cup. They can take it to their home town, take it to their favorite vacation spot, to visit a hospital, or a bar… they drink champagne from it or eat cereal. Some have slept with it in their beds.”

According to Wikipedia, one of hockey’s oldest traditions “dictates that the winning team drink champagne from the top bowl after their victory.” They claim that players have been doing this since 1896 when the Winnipeg Victorias gulped down some celebratory bubbly.

Now you can get give the hockey fan in your life the thrill of their life every night with the NHL League Logo Stanley Cup Popcorn Maker. For full disclosure, this Stanley Cup is not actually authentic, but a precedent for popcorn was set in 2000 when New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur took the Cup to the movies with his family, filled the cup with popcorn, and went to town!

I see no reason why you and a loved one shouldn’t sip champagne from the top while you share some popcorn from the bottom!

Thanks to our friends at Yahoo’s Puck Daddy for this amazing gift idea.

How Tough Are Hockey Players?

Dear Sports Fan,

I had heard hockey fans were tough but seriously, how tough are hockey players? I saw a guy get hit in the face with a puck last night, get stitched up, and keep playing. Sheesh.

Sincerely,
Sam

— — —

Dear Sam,

They are really tough.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

Just kidding — we’ll write a bit more about this while we’re on the subject. As the Marx Brother’s line from Monkey Business goes, “How much tough you want? You pay too much, we too much tough.” Hockey players are too much tough. The guy you saw last night is named Andrew Shaw. This was him before the game:

This was Shaw during the game:

And this was him after the game:

So, yeah, they are tough. One thing that is notable about hockey culture, which we mentioned before in our post on Ken Dryden’s article earlier this playoff season about violence in Hockey, is how completely brutal players are to each other. The ethos of hockey allows for a player to target another player who he knows to be injured without any guilt. As a result of this, hockey teams are notoriously silent about who is injured and how badly. During the playoffs you may have heard the phrase “So and so has a ‘upper body injury'” or a “lower body injury” or even at times a “body injury.” This is a compromise between the league which insists the teams give out some injury information and the teams that don’t want to give any out. After the season is over, when there is no reason to hide anything anymore, the list of injuries that players were playing through is often unbelievable:

On the winning Blackhawks, aside from Shaw, Michael Handzus played with a broken wrist and a torn ligament in his knee and Marian Hossa played with a pinched nerve in his neck that left him unable to feel his right foot. The Bruins were at least as injured. Nathan Horton played with a separated shoulder that is going to require surgery and Tyler Seguin will also need surgery on his hip. Patrice Bergeron who was one of those players said to have had a “body injury” almost made that an accurate statement with his broken ribs, torn cartilage and separated shoulder.

There seems to be equal parts honor and lunacy in playing through these injuries but increasingly the lunacy is outweighing the honor when it comes to concussions. Speculation and euphemism about concussions hovered over some players, Jaromir Jagr and Jonothan Toews primarily, but as of yet no one has admitted to having suffered one. Frankly this is where a lot of hockey fans find the line between being impressed with hockey players’ toughness and being concerned for their health and saddened or disgusted by the sport very tough to identify.

Why are hockey players so tough? Tradition has a lot to do with it — there is so much ritual in hockey from the anthem before the games to the hand-shake line after a series is complete — and a lot of that tradition teaches players how to react to and play through pain. I also speculated in the Why Do People Like Hockey post that the very nature of hockey allows for playing through injuries that would be impossible in other sports because players play for 45 second shifts at a time, making it more psychologically possible for them to convince themselves they can overcome pain one more time and then one more time again.

Hoping your reading experience was pain-free,
Ezra Fischer