Impact of power plays´ efficiency on ice hockey match result and team standings

Abstract

The main aim of this research was to determine the impact of the game, in which is participating a team that has numerical superiority, on the match results and team standings at the 2017 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship. We studied 31 matches. In order to compare differences in power plays´ occurrence and number of scored goals in power plays of winning and losing teams we used the Chi-Square Test. Spearman´s Rank- Order Correlation (R) was used to determine the relationship between the team standings at the World Championship and efficiency of power plays, as well as the goals scored in power plays. The level of statistical significance was set at 5 %. We found out significant relationships between the number of scored goals in power plays and the team standing at the tournament (R = 0.696; p ≤ 0.05). However, there was no significant relationship between the final standings at the tournament and efficiency of using power plays (R = 0.503, p > 0.05). At the 5 % significance level, we did not confirm any statistically significant difference in the number of power plays between winning team (121) and defeated team (131) (Χ2 = 0.397; p > 0.05). We noticed a similar situation also in number of scored goals in power plays (Χ2 = 3.429; p > 0.05), although the winners scored 27 goals and the losers 15 goals. The relationship between the match result and the success rate of power plays was statistically significant (Χ2 = 5.468; p ≤ 0.05).