Why The First Goal Matters

I spent the better part of Saturday digging through scoresheets and boxscores from the 2019-20 Canada West women's hockey season in an effort to see which teams scored first and how often they won after notching the first goal of the game. Honestly, this led me down a deeper rabbit hole where not only did I scroll through the 112 individual games of the 2019-20 season, but I began pulling all sorts of data out of the information. Rarely does HBIC venture into the statistical analysis of the game, but this weekend is all about the 2019-20 Canada West women's hockey season as this information appears to be pretty incredible.

I should preface this by saying that I do believe that getting ahead and making a team chase you is a good philosophy to take. The question, though, was how often does a team win in regulation when scoring the first goal, what are the chances of earning any number of points per game when one scores first, and what were the records of the individual teams when scoring first. If none of this interests you, I apologize for taking up your time, but I think you'll find this as fascinating as I did.

It should be noted that NHL teams win about 67% of the time when scoring the first goal. I wanted to see if this held true in the ultra-competitive Canada West women's conference where it seems that any team can beat any other team on a given day. With that kind of parity, there isn't much separating the teams in individual games, so scoring that first goal is an advantage gained only once per game.

Before we get into this, it should be noted that the January 17, 2020 game between the Saskatchewan Huskies and Calgary Dinos was the only game where the two teams took a 0-0 tie into a shootout. Because the shootout is determined differently than a game played over regulation time, this game was excluded from the totals, leaving us with 111 games to sort through for information. If it matters, that game was won by Saskatchewan 1-0 in shootout.

CONFERENCE NUMBERS

After going through 111 games of action, I discovered that teams who scored first in Canada West women's hockey compiled a record of 78-17-7-9 over the 2019-20 season. That means that teams who scored first earned a three-point win in 70.27% of games while teams who scored first were assured of a point or better in 77.18% of games last season.

I think most coaches in Canada West would tell us that earning 21 points out of a possible 30 points (70%) over ten games simply by scoring first would be something they'd take every season. Further to that, 23 points of a possible 30 points (77%) over ten games is an even better statistic to focus on when it comes to scoring first. When you consider that Alberta finished in first-place in 2019-20 with 59 points, earning one-third of that total simply by scoring first in the first ten games of the season would take a ton of pressure off everyone.

When looking at when the first goals of the season were scored, 70 were scored in the first period (63.06%). In comparison, 29 were scored in the second period (26.13%), ten were scored in the third period (9.01%), and two came in overtime (1.80%). Again, if you can earn 14 points (62% of 23 points) simply by scoring first in the opening frame and playing well for the remainder of the game, that's something every Canada West coach would be imploring onto his or her players.

I broke these numbers down further to see if scoring first at home or on the road made a difference. Obviously, playing at home means some comforts and bounces that home teams can prepare for, but it remains to be seen if there's any impact on scoring first and how it correlates to winning. In saying that, home teams accounted for 62 first goals (55.856%) while road teams scored 49 first goals (44.144%).

When looking at how this may correlate to wins and losses, home teams who scored first were a combined 45-7-3-7 while road teams were a combined 33-10-4-2. If you need simpler numbers, home teams had a 72.58% three-point win percentage and a 79.57% assurance to earn at least one point. Comparatively, road teams had a 67.35% three-point win percentage and a 74.15% assurance of gaining at least a point simply by scoring first. It seems scoring first might be a good strategy with those numbers.

For those that may be wondering, special teams goals did factor into the equation as well, but not as prominently as one would believe. Of the 111 first goals scored, only 33 were scored on the power-play by the eight teams (29.73%) while just one was scored shorthanded (0.90%). With just 30.63% of first goals coming on special teams, it reinforces the idea that five-on-five play can determine games when it comes to scoring that all-important first goal.

Tomorrow, I'll go over each team's record when scoring the first goal and throw some added numbers in there. Let's just say that the standings certainly show the correlaton between scoring first and each team's record when it comes to the number of times they scored first and the records they compiled when scoring first. There are a couple of other numbers I want to dig into in these stats, but I'll do that at a later date than today.

As you can see from the above numbers, in an ultra-competitve conference where the parity is high, scoring first matters a lot when it comes to earning points. By notching that first goal, Canada West women's teams do themselves a big favour when it comes to winning games.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!