Re: Rule Changes: Who got screwed and wants a fix?
Any chance you have the ability the ratio of OT wins to ties then and now? I have a feeling that with today's goaltending and scoring rates it's nowhere near what it was back then.
At this time what I have is limited, but here is what I do have:
Code:
Season RS games OT games won tied %OT games % won % tied
1975-76 552 61 44 17 11.05% 72.13% 27.87%
1984-85 805 109 77 32 13.54% 70.64% 29.36%
1998-99 922 144 55 89 15.62% 38.19% 61.81%
2012-13 1002 196 62 134 19.56% 31.63% 68.37%
2013-14 1003 168 55 113 16.75% 32.74% 67.26%
2014-15 1002 190 78 112 18.96% 41.05% 58.95%
2015-16 1021 219 78 141 21.45% 35.62% 64.38%
2016-17 1018 186 58 128 18.27% 31.18% 68.82%
2017-18 1016 189 72 117 18.60% 38.10% 61.90%
2012-18 6062 1148 403 745 18.94% 35.10% 64.90%
The numbers are for regular season games only and any multiple overtimes have been excluded. However, there may be a few single overtime games that went beyond the 5/10 minute mark if the games required a winner for an in season tournament. As can be seen the percentage of games that have gone into overtime has increased from 11% in 1975-76 to an average of 18.6% over the past six seasons. The percentage of games tied after overtime has increased from 28% in 1975-76 to an average of 64.9% over the past six seasons, with a low of 58.95% in 2014-15 to a high of 68.82% in 2016-17.
That is a significant increase, but some of it is due to the shortening of overtime from 10 to 5 minutes. As I posted previously, I believe at the time the change was made it was stated that 70% of all games won in overtime occurred in the first 5 minutes. Assuming that is accurate, then in 1975-76 another 13 games would have been tied after 5 minutes and in 1984-85 another 23 games would have been tied. That would change the numbers to 31 won and 30 tied in 1975-76 and 54 won and 55 tied in 1984-85. That would drop the gap from 65%-29% to 65%-50%. Using the same percentage, if overtime was still 10 minutes, in 1998-99 another 24 games would have been won, bring the numbers to 79 won and 65 tied, and over the past six seasons another 173 games would have been won, bringing the numbers to 576 won and 572 tied. That would drop the gap from between 1975-76 and the past six seasons from 65%-29% to 50%-29%. The best way to see how the change from 10 to 5 minute overtimes affected the number of ties would be to look at the seasons immediately before and after the change, but I currently don't have that information readily available.
Also, the percentage of games that have gone into overtime has increased. As can be seen 11% of games in 1975-76, 13.5% of games in 1984-85 and 15.6% of the games in 1998-99 went to overtime, while the past six seasons 18.94% of games have gone to overtime. Part of this is the changes in NCAA rules regarding opponents, as in 1975-76 and 1984-85 teams regularly played games against Canadian (32 & 51), DII (52 & 8), DIII (17 & 48), NAIA (4 & 16) and even club teams (2 & 6) that were all counted as games. Now, very few games are played against non-DI opponents outside of exhibition games. This disparity in opponents is reflected in the average margin of victory, which has decreased from 3.272 in 1975-76 to 2.975 in 1984-85 to an average of 2.152 over the past five seasons.
Of course, better goaltending and lower scoring is also a factor, as the average goals per games in 1975-76 was 9.828, in 1984-85 it was 8.662, in 1998-99 it was 6.436 and over the past five seasons it has averaged 5.613.
Sean