Fun With Numbers - Do Your Research!

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Fun With Numbers:
Do Your Research!
Copyright Iain Fyffe, 2002
Published November 20, 2002

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Here’s an easy lesson: do your research! If I had looked a little harder before publishing my last article, I would have realized that shots on goal numbers for Summit Series Games 6, 7, and 8 are actually available, and do not need to be estimated.

But to make some lemonade, we can determine how good my estimates. The answer is, good and bad.

My estimates of the Soviets’ shots were pretty good, if a little low:

Game	Estimate	Actual
6	23	29
7	24	31
8	27	27

My estimates of Canadian shots were not good:

Game	Estimate	Actual
6	37	22
7	37	25
8	37	36

Though I did remarkably well in Game 8, when I estimated shots were 37-27, and they were actually 36-27.

But the fact that Team Canada had low shot totals in Games 6 and 7 means I was overrating Tretiak’s performance. Following are the actual goaltending stats for the series:

Vladislav Tretiak

Game	Shots	Goals	Save Pct
1	32	3	.906
2	36	4	.889
3	38	4	.895
4	41	3	.927
5	37	4	.892
6	22	3	.864
7	25	4	.840
8	36	6	.833
	267	31	.884

Tony Esposito

Game	Shots	Goals	Save Pct
2	21	1	.952
3	25	4	.840
5	33	5	.848
7	31	3	.903
	110	13	.882

Ken Dryden

Game	Shots	Goals	Save Pct
1	30	7	.767
4	31	5	.839
6	29	2	.931
8	27	5	.815
	117	19	.938

So even though the media often portrays the Canadian goalies’ performances as poor, Tony Esposito’s save percentage was virtually identical to the universally-applauded Tretiak. Only Dryden played badly. And if you take out Game 1, when Canada wasn’t ready for the Soviets’ talent, Dryden’s save percentage was .862, not too far below the other two.

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