I wrote that nobody tries this strategy at any time other
than the end of the game, but there was a game, years ago, in which the
strategy was employed throughout. The circumstances were thus: two
teams were going to be tied in points on the last day of the regular season.
The team with the most goals (not the best differential, I note) would be
the one to advance to playoffs. So when one team realized it was going
to lose this critical game, they began to pull their goalie at every
opportunity, in order to try to score as many goals as possible. Think
about that. In other words, they acted as if pulling the goalie really
was a good strategy. But if I remember correctly, they gave up as many or more goals than they scored.
The
result, of course, was a chaotic, bizarre game that called the very integrity of the sport into
question. The NHL changed the rules next year to ensure that this
circus would not happen again.
Copyright © 2005 Bill Van Dyk All rights
reserved. |
August 15, 2005
The NHL does not even know when the first goalie was pulled. The
New York Rangers, coached by Frank Boucher, are credited with inventing the
move, in 1939 or 1940 or 1941 (like I said, the NHL doesn't know).
It took me a while, but I finally found an online
reference to that game referred to in the left column. It was New York
in 1970, in the 1969-70 season. Eddie Giacomin was in -- or out of
goal. The reference I found didn't mention the other team involved or
the final score. Added November 2008: I came
across a report about a study last year that claimed to prove that the strategy of pulling
your goalie was, in fact, demonstrably effective. I won't be convinced
until I have a look at the study. |
I have been thinking about
this particular problem for years. Why is it a good strategy for a
hockey team to pull their goalie in the last minute of a hockey game when
they are trailing by one goal, but not a good strategy at any other time?
I'll tell you right off the
bat that I have a strong suspicion that almost every one uses this strategy
because it's always been used, and everyone else does. There is not a
single coach, manager, or player who has any credible proof that it's a
good strategy. All of the
evidence is anecdotal and religious in nature.
I believe that it is
actually a bad strategy and that a team has a better chance of tying the
game by keeping their goalie in the net. Sound strange?
The assumption at work is
that by removing the goal-tender and adding a skater, you thereby increase
your chances of scoring to an extent that more than offsets the rather
obvious disadvantage of not having a goalie and thereby increasing the other
team's chances of scoring on you.
It is immediately obvious that
this strategy is flawed in terms of logic. If removing your goalie and adding a skater
gave you a real advantage, teams would do it all the time. Obviously
nobody does. So why do teams think that doing it in the last minute of
a game is different?
In defense of the strategy, people will
argue that you only pull your goalie when you have possession of the puck
and you are headed for the other team's end. They argue that the
attacking team will summon remarkable strength and courage in the face of
adversity that will somehow bend the rules of logic and result in an
advantage that no coach, in the history of the NHL, has been able to
demonstrate under any other circumstance.
Having possession of the
puck improves your chances for a few seconds, but it doesn't really
address the issue. Teams obtain possession of the puck in their own
end dozens of times during a game. If that strategy works in the last minute, there's
no reason why it wouldn't work in the first minute. Why not pull your
goalie every time you have possession of the puck and start a rush out of your own end? Because the
other team might get the puck back and score on you? How is this
different in the last minute of a hockey game?
I suppose you could argue
that 60 seconds is not long enough for the other team to get a good shot at
your net. If that was true, we would rarely see an empty net goal.
But we see them all the time.
There is another weird
consideration. The defending team will quite often change it's style
of play as well-- though not as much as they used to. The defending
team will suddenly retreat behind their own blue line and form a box.
When they get possession, instead of rushing down the ice and trying to
score-- precisely what the attacking team does not want them to do-- they
skate up to centre and then take a pot shot at the net. Often, they
take the opportunity to change lines, on the weird assumption that the other
team is going to get the puck back almost immediately and renew the attack.
The shot from centre
doesn't go in very often because usually one or more members of the
attacking team are able to get back on time to block it, and the defending
team doesn't try to create a sustained counter-attack. But it does go
in often enough to really finish off the team that is trailing.
We will never know the
truth until some coach somewhere decides to go a season or two without ever
pulling the goalie. But that would require genuine leadership.
It would require genuinely independent thought. It
would require someone unafraid of heresy.