What Do You Think About the Random Factor in Hockey

[Sztroga]

I'm a NBA-guy and I'm interested in your opinion. Does the random factor reduce the enjoyment of watching NHL for you? It often happens that the best team does not win the championship beacuse of the high randomness in this sport.

 

[TheDawnOfANewTage]

Doesn’t reduce my enjoyment, just makes me view outcomes differently than “best team wins.” Not to throw shade, but I think the Blues are a good example of a team that just had the right hot streak, right bounces, etc. Habs weren’t even close to being the best during their recent run to the final. Just two examples, and individual regular season games can be even more random. The lower score (compared to basketball) and variability of a goalie’s night makes those lil bounces much more important.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Randomness is entirely overblown in this sport. Theres more of it than in the other sports but to imply it plays a major factor in outcomes is absurd.

 

[banks]

I think the random factor (as you call it) is higher in hockey than in most major sports. But I actually like that a lot of the time. There's lots of NFL or NBA games where you know one team doesn't really have a chance. But bounces and luck mean either team can win a hockey game.

I don't think that I agree when you say "the best team does not win the championship because of the high randomness." The best team does win the Cup because they won it. You can win a game with randomness and luck, but not 16 playoff games. Every Cup win is earned. They don't call it "the randomest trophy in sports".

 

[emptyNedder]

This line of thought leads to madness. A recent episode of "Hidden Brain" did a great job of arguing that almost everything in life has multiple random pre-cursors. One of the appeals of any sport is that it gives us a sense that the outcome is based on talent and effort. We have evolved a psychological trait that allows us to see/feel intention in a random universe.

 

[qc14]

More enjoyable. I think along with the NFL it's the perfect balance of randomness/skill to where on any single game any team does have a legitimate shot of winning but at the same time over the course of a season the better teams do win out.

In the NBA, for example, you probably don't need to watch all but one or two first round series. The bad teams are also so bad that it's difficult to watch them at all. The Wizards have 9 wins on the season, the Sharks have almost double that at 17.

I definitely still enjoy skill and "sports" that are almost all skill and no randomness -- I am a massive chess fan for example -- but it's a feature and not a bug of the NHL to me

 

[Bear of Bad News]

As a Kraken fan, randomness is all I have going for me right now. Don't take that away.

(And Shane Wright is pretty neat.)

 

[filinski77]

I wouldn't say it's 'random' - more so that the gap between the best team in the league and the worst team in the league is significantly smaller than most other sports.

 

[tfwnogf]

I'm a NBA-guy and I'm interested in your opinion. Does the random factor reduce the enjoyment of watching NHL for you? It often happens that the best team does not win the championship beacuse of the high randomness in this sport.

I disagree. Every team has to put up with the "randomness" of the sport, and the best of 7 series each round basically ensures that you need to be the best team to win the series. Would anyone say that any cup champ was not the best team that year? There may have been better teams in the regular season, but they weren't better when it counted the most.

 

[GeeoffBrown]

I feel like NFL playoffs would be most random because it is single elimination?

 

[FlyguyOX]

It's extremely underrated by general hockey fans in their analysis of players and teams.

 

[Fig]

Depends on what you mean by randomness. Randomness to us typically doesn't mean no one knows what is going on. Randomness to us means that the momentum can swing a lot easier. Although there's a specific expectation of statistical outcome over a season for who will win more games, individual games can be a lot closer and more exciting due to "randomness".

If my math is not mistaken...
2/32 NHL teams <.400 or 6.25% of teams in the cellar.
7/30 NBA teams <.400 or 23.33% of teams in the cellar.

18/32 NHL teams .400 to .599 or 56.25% of teams in the middle
15/30 NBA teams .400 to .599 or 50.00% of teams in the middle

12/32 of NHL teams over .600 or 37.5% of teams who are dominant; 2 teams over .700
8/30 of NBA teams over .600 or 26.66% of teams who are dominant; 3 teams over .700

https://www.nhl.com/standings/2025-02-10/league

NBA Team Standings & Stats | NBA.com

Easier to be a fan of any team when there's less teams that are considered cannon fodder (<.400).

As much as sometimes we think our own NHL team sucks, the difference between only winning 1/3 of your games (really sucks), half your games (in the mix), and 2/3 of the games (elite) isn't that big in the NHL. The difference between .500 (41/82 games) and ~.600 (49/82 = .597) is just 8 games over the entire season. Slightly more teams are typically regularly in the mix (56.25% vs 50% right now which is comparable to NBA) and far less teams are just straight out out of it (6.25% vs 23.33% which pretty big gap between NHL and NBA).

 

[Bear of Bad News]

If my math is not mistaken...
2/32 NHL teams <.400 or 6.25% of teams in the cellar.
7/30 NBA teams <.400 or 23.33% of teams in the cellar.

18/32 NHL teams .400 to .599 or 56.25% of teams in the middle
15/30 NBA teams .400 to .599 or 50.00% of teams in the middle

12/32 of NHL teams over .600 or 37.5% of teams who are dominant; 2 teams over .700
8/30 of NBA teams over .600 or 26.66% of teams who are dominant; 3 teams over .700

I'd recommend making an adjustment to account for the fact that 0.500 is "average" in the NBA but far from average in the NHL.

 

[Discipline Daddy]

I agree with others that randomness is underrated. Scoring a goal can be so fluky. I've seen a lot of games decided by a point shot from the corner that bounced off a defenseman's foot. The chance of those shots going in might be 1% if it's not a 1 timer or from an elite goal scorer. But if that 1% goes in, it completely changes the complexion of the game.

If you believe that goal scoring has a random factor, and combine that with the fact that teams score about 3 goals a game, you can see that there is a great variance of how many goals you will score in a particular game.

Even in lacrosse, where teams can routinely score 10 or more goals, the randomness less important.

A sport like soccer feels less random to me because goal scoring feels more skill-based and less fluky. I'd love someone to confirm or deny my bias here. My intuition is that the ball is bigger and moves slower across the huge soccer field, which makes it take more predictable paths than a tiny rubber disk.

 

[Ceremony]

The best team wins because they win four best of 7 game series in order to win.

 

[Super Hans]

The most random aspect of hockey is the quality of bozos they get to talk about the sport on TV broadcasts.

 

[Chockey22]

Hockey has a significant amount of randomness due to the sheer complexity of the game; the greater the number of factors you introduce into producing an outcome the greater impact of randomness in any outcome. A game played on ice that gets chewed up over time, with a rubber puck that can move unexpectedly, sticks that can break, skate blades that get nicked, boards that can produce uncertain bounces - then add in the randomness of the players' and officials' health/perception on any given night - and there is a lot of 'chance' involved in hockey. Over time of course, most of these factors even out a fair bit and become less influential, but there is a lot of randomness in hockey, especially in any given game.
In my view, it makes it more exciting - hockey has a great blend of chance and skill. Skilled response to randomness is what's interesting, for me anyway. And, this does not take away from the champions at all, winning the Cup is extremely difficult because of the complexity of the game - and over time randomness has a tendency to become less important.

 

[dgibb10]

I feel like NFL playoffs would be most random because it is single elimination?

To an extent, but an individual NFL game is MUCH less luck oriented than the NHL.

You (generally) in the NFL, march down the field. It requires sustained successful plays to put up points, rather than the binary outcome of goal/no goal in hockey where luck much more heavily plays in.

 

[dgibb10]

I disagree. Every team has to put up with the "randomness" of the sport, and the best of 7 series each round basically ensures that you need to be the best team to win the series. Would anyone say that any cup champ was not the best team that year? There may have been better teams in the regular season, but they weren't better when it counted the most.

No it most certainly does not.

 

[Mattb124]

Not in the least. While low scoring sports are perhaps more impacted by “randomness” (lucky bounce), the hard cap in hockey tends to offer more parity than the NBA’s cap structure.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Best of 7 series, and then doing it 4x, removes a lot of randomness on who will win a championship.

 

[SavBigMoneyAtBedards]

Of course there is randomness.

But the best teams have to be good enough to beat their opponents, beat the bad calls and non-calls from the refs, and overcome any flukes from randomness. If you can do that you deserve to win.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Gotta make sure what we’re talking about.

Injuries are unfortunate but a reality.

Goaltenders are a big part of a team and not random.

Over a best of seven, much of the variance does get controlled.

Hockey is a high variance sport in general.

 

[DrunkTurtle]

Makes the sport more fun to watch no doubt about it.

The more clear the result is before the game even begins the less exciting it will be.

 

[SnuggaRUDE]

You're asking people who can't spell Bayesian analysis to tell you what they think about it?