Re: Boston University 2019-2020
It's amazing how often this happens. I see it in the college game and younger (high school, youth hockey). The team that scores an early goal goes onto lose, because they think it is reflective of how the game will go. I'd love to see an analysis of the difference in win percentage for the team that scores first, when that goal comes in the first 5 minutes versus later in the game. No Sean, I am not requesting that you do this.


But some games that come to mind going way back: The 1991 NCAA semis against Clarkson, the 1990 Beanpot final against BC, the 1991 Beanpot final against Harvard; '97 NCAA title against UND.
I decided to record additional information from this season’s games into my spreadsheet I use for tracking goals in mid-December and still needed to go back and look at the box scores for all the games before then to get said information. I used your comment to do so, as well as record when the first goal was scored in each game. So, even though you didn’t ask that I do it, here are the raw numbers for the 832 games (excluding exhibitions) in which at least one goal was scored:
team to score first
537-196-99 0.705
when scoring in first 5 minutes
165-58-35 0.707
when scoring after first 5 minutes
372-138-64 0.704
So, there really is no difference. When you drill down further, of the 537 wins, 312 times the team never lost the lead, 39 times they did and 186 times they were tied up, so they had a 312-39-186 0.754 record maintaining the lead. Of the 165 games when opening the scoring in the first 5 minutes those numbers are 100-15-50 0.757, while when scoring after 5 minutes 212-24-136 0.753. So, again, there is really no difference.
When you get more granular you do see some differences:
when scoring in first minute
33-11-3 0.734
when scoring after first minute
504-185-96 0.704
when scoring in first 2 minutes
73-21-8 0.755
when scoring after first 2 minutes
464-175-91 0.698
when scoring in first 3 minutes
104-31-19 0.737
when scoring after first 3 minutes
433-165-80 0.698
when scoring in first 4 minutes
132-46-28 0.709
when scoring after first 4 minutes
405-150-71 0.704
So, scoring the first goal in the first 3 minutes has improved a team's chances of winning vs scoring the first goal after 3 minutes. And scoring the first goal after 60 minutes gives a team a guaranteed victory (it has happened 4 times so far this season).
A few other facts for this season: the quickest opening goal so far was 9 seconds (UNH vs Yale on 3 January) and the latest opening goal was 64:59 (Princeton at St. Lawrence on 11 January). The median first goal is scored at 8:34, while the average first goal is scored at 12:09.
Sean
P.S. BU is 7-3-3 when scoring first this season, while Minnesota State is 23-1-1.