Did Fighting Have a Measurable Impact on Ranger Games Last Year?

Fighting has always been a polarizing issue in society, and has increasingly become controversial in hockey as well, the one major American sport where a fight is not accompanied by a significant suspension. In life outside of sports, there are crowds that view fighting as a perfectly acceptable way to handle a disagreement or send a message, while others view it as cruel and barbaric. Similarly, in the hockey community there are people who view fighting as a necessary part of the game, while others view it as an outdated practice that no longer has a place in today’s game; not to mention the proven link that has been established by multiple studies between head injuries and CTE (yes Gary Bettman, it is a proven link, cut the crap).

Despite how you may feel about fighting in hockey on a moral level, there are several factors that fans debate as to why fighting should be allowed, and why it is an important aspect of the game. Most of these arguments tend to revolve around three key factors: hockey fights serve as a deterrent to and protect star players against cheap hits, they create a more enjoyable product, and they have a tangible in-game impact on play. Many, much more accomplished hockey writers than myself have written about whether having enforcers serve as a deterrent, so let’s leave that one off to the side for the purposes of our discussion today.

As for the second point, I will never tell any fan how to consume and enjoy the great sport of hockey, so I am not about to sit here and tell you whether you should enjoy hockey more or less because of the presence of fighting in the game. Instead, let’s examine this third point, and try to determine if fighting had any consistent, measurable impact on the games the Rangers played throughout the 2016-2017 season.

Before we get into the actual research and data to help us determine whether fighting had a measurable impact on Rangers games last year, let’s quickly lay out the methodology I will use and discuss my personal feelings on the topic. To be completely candid, I very much enjoy a good, organic scrap from time to time in games, provided that both players are willing participants in the fight.

I think staged fights are dumb, and I think it is ridiculous that an unwilling player has to occasionally fight another team’s enforcer because someone got their feelings hurt by a hit that often was completely legal. Personal feelings aside, when I began my research for this article, I came into it with an open mind, and decided that I was going to let the research dictate my conclusion. To conduct the research, I relied heavily on hockeyfights.com for quick and easy access to fighting data, I used NHL.com’s play-by-play data to compile information on how each team performed after a fight, and I went back and watched clips from these games, all in an attempt to determine whether any team gained a notable advantage in play following a scrap.

Another key component to my methodology is that I specifically examined how teams performed in the same period that the fight occurred in. The reason for this is that, once a period is over, the teams have an opportunity to regroup in the locker rooms. I am not saying that it is impossible for any potential momentum gained from a fight to carry over to the following period; however, there are a number of additional events that can occur in the locker room to change the tides, such as coaches doing their jobs properly and identifying ways to combat the strategies that opponents are employing against them. For this reason, it would be inappropriate to attribute a fight that occurred in the middle of the first period to a goal that was scored during the second period.

The Rangers got into 21 total fights last year—16 in the regular season and 5 in the playoffs—spread out across 13 regular season and 4 playoff games. According to hockeyfights.com, Rangers players won seven of these fights and lost eight, with the remaining six being ruled too close to declare definitive winners. The Rangers most commonly got into fights in the first periods of games, and rarely fought when they were trailing, as 17 of the 21 fights occurred when they were leading or tied. Further, of the four fights that occurred while they were trailing, only one happened when they were down multiple goals, a sign that the team did not grow overly-frustrated due to being down big in a game. The table below summarizes the data related to how often and when the team found itself throwing hands with the opponent.

Total Number of Fights	21
Number of Games a Fight Occurred in	17
NYR Fighting Record	7-8-6
Number of Fights – Tie Game	9
Number of Fights – Up 1 Goal	4
Number of Fights – Down 1 Goal	3
Number of Fights – Up Multiple Goals	4
Number of Fights – Down Multiple Goals	1
Number of Fights – First Period	9
Number of Fights – Second Period	6
Number of Fights – Third Period	6

Before we dig into trying to measure any in-game impact of fights, we need to cut down on the list of fights a bit, as some occurred at the very end of periods or games, so we don’t need to waste our time including them in the data. First, we can throw out those two fights that occurred near the end of game four of the Ottawa series in the playoffs. I’m sure you all remember this game well; the Rangers were up 4-1 and the game devolved into a total mess in the last five minutes, which included two fights, numerous additional penalties and no real sustained play. No team gained any positive in-game impact from those fights, and Ottawa embarrassingly revealed themselves to be sore losers.

We can also throw out the two fights that occurred at the very end of the second period against the Devils on March 21, and the fight at the end of the first period against the Flyers on November 25, for the reasons I stated earlier. This leaves us with 16 fights-worth of data to analyze to determine whether fighting had any measurable in-game impact on Rangers games throughout the 2016-2017 season. Yes, this is a very small sample size, so small variations could have a significant impact on the results, but at the end of the day this article is just for fun, and not some commissioned study by the NHL, so let’s have some fun with it.

Now that I’ve laid out my methodology and summarized when the Rangers typically got into fights on the ice, let’s see if we can determine if there was any measurable on-ice impact of these fights. When you look solely at who scored the next goal following a fight, it appears that fighting had a positive effect on the Rangers play last year in aggregate. Of the 16 fights we’ve narrowed our focus down to, the Rangers scored the next goal in the same period eight times.

The opponent scored the first goal following a fight only four times, and no more goals were scored during the same period following a fight four times. Further, in the 12 instances where one team scored a goal in the same period of the fight, all of them occurred within five minutes of the scrap. However, two of the eight goals by the Rangers were likely the result of the opponent taking another penalty, putting the Rangers on the power play. In the December 11 game against the Devils, Nick Lappin took a roughing penalty in addition to getting his ass handed to him by Kevin Klein in the fight, and Jimmy Vesey would go on to score on the ensuing power play. In the December 27 game against Ottawa, Kyle Turris took a penalty shortly after the third period fight between Jimmy Vesey and Mark Stone. While the Rangers did not score on that resulting power play, they scored literally seconds after its expiration.

Qualifying Fights	16
Times the Rangers Scored First After a Fight in the Same Period	8 (2 due to power plays)
Times the Opponent Scored First After a Fight in the Same Period	4 (0 due to power plays)
Times Neither Team Scored First After a Fight in the Same Period	4

Every hockey fan knows that goals can sometimes be fluky, so it would be inappropriate to judge which team got the advantage in play solely based on who scored the next goal. Given that, I combed through the play-by-by analysis provided on NHL.com and went back and watched footage of the games to determine if any team had a noticeable advantage is possession and play after each fight leading up to the next goal, and the results were a complete mixed bag.

In terms of Corsi (shot attempts), a metric that is used as a measurement for puck possession and includes all shots directed towards the net, including shots on goal, missed shots and blocked shots, the Rangers had the advantage following nine of the 16 qualified fights, while the opponent had the advantage in the other seven. However, one-third of the times that the Rangers had the Corsi advantage, it was by only one shot attempt. Conversely, only one of the instances where the opponent had the advantage were by just a single shot attempt. The opponent had an advantage of at least five shot attempts three times, while the Rangers had only one such instance.

Remember, after 12 of these 16 fights, a goal was scored by either team within the next five minutes, so a five-shot attempt advantage by a team in this short of a timeframe shows they really dominated the play after the fight. Further, the Rangers had a power play after four of the nine fights that they led in shot attempts after, compared to only two such instances for the opponent. In fact, in the January 23 game against the Kings, the Kings took a minor penalty right after the fight and they still controlled the play despite being on the penalty kill.

Qualifying Fights	16
Times the Rangers Controlled Possession After a Fight	9 (4 due to power plays)
Times the Rangers Dominated Possession After a Fight	1 (0 due to power plays)
Times the Opponent Controlled Possession After a Fight	7 (2 due to power plays)
Times the Opponent Dominated Possession After a Fight	2 (0 due to power plays)

Finally, let’s combine all of this and see how many times either the Rangers or the opponent controlled the play after a fight AND scored the next goal. If a team accomplishes both, I think it is safe to say that the team gained the clear in-game advantage after the fight. Of the eight instances that the Rangers scored first after a fight, they also had the possession advantage in five of them; however, three of these featured an additional penalty taken by the opponent.

Conclusion: the Rangers gained a clear advantage in play after in five of the 16 qualifying fights last season (31%), but three of them included an additional penalty taken by the opponent. In other words, the Rangers obtained a measurable, in-game advantage that one could reasonably argue was a direct result of the fight after only two of the 16 qualifying scraps, or just 12.5% percent of the time. Conversely, of the four instances when the opponent scored first after a fight, they also had the post-fight possession advantage once. Of the four qualifying fights in which neither team scored within the same period, the opponent had the clear possession advantage in three, one of which featured an additional penalty by the Rangers. Further, the game that the Rangers had the possession advantage in was the January 14 game against the Habs where Andrew Shaw received a game misconduct and a 5-minute major penalty in addition to the fight he got into with J.T. Miller.

Conclusion:

I’ve just thrown a lot of game data at you in an attempt to determine whether or not the Rangers or their opponents gained a consistent and measurable in-game impact from fights that occurred throughout the 2016-2017 season, but what does it all mean? The translation of all of this is that there is no way that anyone can justifiably state one way or the other that the Rangers consistently gained an advantage in play from the fights they got into throughout the 2016-2017 season.

Of the 16 total qualified fights the Rangers had, only two resulted in them having an advantage in possession and scoring the next goal in the period, and the only additional game they carried the play after the fight without scoring a goal was largely due to a five-minute major penalty taken by the opponent. Conversely, their opponents had equally unimpressive and inconsistent results after the fights, having only one game in which they drove play and scored the next goal, and three in which they controlled the bulk of the play without either team scoring in the period. The remaining nine games saw inconsistent results for the teams, as either the Rangers would control play but the opponents would score next or vice versa.

Long story short, while the Rangers and their opponents may have gained an advantage in a couple of games spread across the long season and post season, in aggregate fighting did not have any consistent, measurable impact on the games the Rangers played.