For fifty years now, Canadians have celebrated the climax of ice hockey’s very first best-on-best international competition, the eight-game ‘Summit Series’ of 1972. This long-awaited battle between Canada and the Soviet Union had been in the making since 1954. In case you hadn’t heard, Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the 8th and final game to clinch the series for Canada. Here’s what many regard as Canada’s greatest hockey goal ever, as described by one other than the far more familiar voice of Foster Hewitt.
A very big goal. But in fact Henderson scored the game-winners in each of the Summit Series’ last three games, all of which Canada had to win in order to not lose the series. The name of his third straight game-winning goal speaks to its epic cultural importance, “The Goal of the Century”.
For a half-century now, Canadian hockey fans have joyfully agreed that “Henderson overcame the odds” in performing this superbly well-timed feat. But what does that mean? Until now, it seems that nobody has ever asked. Let’s start that discussion now, with the following question:
How often could a player like Paul Henderson be expected to score a third straight game-winning goal?
MODELLING MATTERS
1 of 2 – Paul Henderson’s professional career
We begin by looking at Henderson’s NHL regular season career, as this is how most individual statistics are derived. The box in the image below shows that Henderson played a total of 707 NHL (regular season) games. In those 707 games he scored the game-winning goal 40 times, as indicated by the circled amount to the right. Henderson scored single game-winning goals about once every 17 to 18 games, every 17.765 games to be exact: (707 divided by 40) = 17.675
To see how often a player would score three straight game-winners at Henderson’s NHL rate, we multiply the rate three times : 17.675 x 17.675 x 17.675 = 5,521. Based his NHL regular season career, Henderson can be expected to score third-straight game winning goal every 5,521 NHL games. This works out to about one game every 69 NHL seasons of 80 games each. We use 80 games instead of the current 82, because in much of the past NHL teams played 70-something games per season.
So, with one 80-game season representing approximately one year of ‘real time’, Henderson could be expected to repeat what he did in Game 8 of the Summit Series about one game every 69 years. How very remarkable then, that he would do this in what is widely regarded as the most important hockey game in Canadian history.
Henderson later moved on to the World Hockey Association, which played its very first game less than two weeks after the Summit Series concluded. In the WHA he only scored 3 game-winning goals in 360 regular seasons games (as seen above in the line directly below his highlighted NHL career totals). When we combine his NHL and WHA regular season totals, Henderson is seen to have scored game-winning goals 43 times in 1067 contests, or once every 24.8 games. At this combined rate he can be expected to score a third straight game-winner once every 15,253 games (24.8 x 24.8 x 24.8) – one game every 190 years or seasons.
When Henderson’s entire body of work is considered, that being all of his professional regular season and playoff games, he is seen to have scored 47 game winners over 1127 games. At this most expanded rate he can be expected to repeat what he did in Moscow about one game every 172 years. (23.98 x 23.98 x 23.98)
2 of 2 – Adjusting for ‘BEST ON BEST’ International Competition
We have assumed that one 80-game season takes about one year to play, and do so because this works quite well for NHL and WHA historical data. But Henderson performed his feat in an even more challenging environment – in a best-on-best international competition where, generally, only the very best NHL players get to play. So, in order to get a handle on how often Paul Henderson would repeat this feat in real time, in the more fitting international context, we ask, How long does it take to play 80 games in best-on-best international competition? Since its notorious introduction on September 2, 1972 in Montreal, Canada’s best men’s hockey teams have played 95 games in thirteen competitions over what is now 50 years.
Doesn’t include the 2016 World Cup.
“Team Canada” has played an average of 1.9 games each year, over the first half-century of best-on-best competition. I will round this rate up to 2 to keep things simple. It therefore takes about 40 times longer for Team Canada to play 80 best-on-best games than it does in the average NHL season. To see how rare Henderson’s feat was in real time, his NHL/WHA frequency must be multiplied by a factor of 40.
On average, it should take him around one game every 6880 years to do what he did in Moscow: score another 3rd straight game-winner in a ‘best on best’ competition (172 x 40 years).
Even this does not go far enough. In the NHL, almost all third straight game-winning goals will come during ordinary or relatively insignificant times of the season. Very few third straight game-winning goals will begin to compare to Henderson’s in terms of importance or significance. In the NHL, only a third straight game-winning goal that wins or clinches the Stanley Cup would generally compare, if this has ever happened. Aside from that, there will be some rare exceptions. One such goal that might compare in terms of significance was mentioned earlier, Wayne Gretzky’s 92nd goal in 1981-82, which set the standing record for most goals in a single NHL season.
By the same reasoning, it must follow that almost all of Canada’s 95 best-on-best games are also relatively ordinary. Only 9 of the 95 contests provided Canadian goals that also won an entire competition, as did Henderson’s. 9 out of 95 rounds down to a frequency of 1 in 10.5. We must multiply the adjusted 6880 years by a further 10.5 years.
Based on his lengthy professional career and Canada’s first 50 years of best-on-best international hockey: what Paul Henderson did in scoring the Goal of the Century is something that he could be expected to about one game every 72,000 years (172 x 40 x 10.5).
Final thoughts on “Modelling.” – As I cautioned in the introduction, the numbers above are only meant to introduce a discussion, not conclude one. On reason why I stress this is because others may envision better ways of measuring or “modelling” what Henderson accomplished. This should be expected, especially when it comes to introductory works.
For example, since we’re focusing on best-on-best hockey, it may be better to figure out how often Paul Henderson scored game-winning goals during that time of his career when he was arguably good enough to make Canada’s best national hockey team. It may also be even more ideal to ask how often “a player on Team Canada” could be expected to do the same thing, rather than just one player. These more thorough investigations are too much work for this solo researcher. But the reader should be alerted to the fact that the expected frequencies will come way down, as they might when other models are introduced.
A second question to ask, whenever a new model is introduced, is if it does or is likely to bring things down to the point where around 2-3 random goals will comparably reproduce Henderson’s feat, either literal or in comparably ‘significant’ fashion. As mentioned in the introduction, only at this rate can one expect or hope that the null hypothesis’ 5 percent standard will be met.
Given what we’ve learned about Henderson’s goal, it may have already been proved that no such model will bringing things down this far.
This leaves one line of defense, at least as far as those who wish to hold up the chance interpretation are concerned: reject the modelling approach entirely by calling Henderson’s feat a one-off.
That doesn’t work here, because a very similar thing plainly occurs with our other two great Canadian hockey goals. To see our next example, click on the link below this video, where Paul Henderson talks about what went through his mind just before he scored what may be best described as a Goal of the Millenniums.
Mapping the Event Horizons 