Counting What Mattered
About one in five NHL goals was scored after the game was already decided. Here is why we stopped counting them, and the kind of statistic we think sports have been missing.
On January 23, 1944, the Detroit Red Wings beat the New York Rangers 15–0, still the most lopsided score in NHL history. Under the What If rule, that game ends 1–0.
Detroit's first goal turned out to be the winner. The fourteen that followed changed the margin and nothing else: not who won, not the points in the standings. Yet every one of them went into a scorer's goal total, every assist on them went into a playmaker's point total, and they have sat in the record book ever since, weighted exactly the same as the goal that won the game.
The NHL already counts game winning goals. But do they know what goals came after the game winning goal?
That is the idea behind What If Hockey:
The winning goal is the one that puts the winner past the loser's final total: in a 5–2 game, it's the third. It's the same goal the NHL already credits as the game-winner.
One goal is not always one goal
A box score is a ledger, and a ledger doesn't care when an entry was made. A goal that ties the game in the third period and a goal that makes it 9–1 both count as one. Every fan knows they aren't the same. One changed the result; the other decorated it.
We aren't trying to replace the traditional numbers. The Official record sits beside ours on every page, and it is the real history. We're asking a second question of the same games: how much of a player's production actually went into deciding the result?
How much gets set aside?
More than you might think. We applied the rule to every regular-season game in NHL history, from the first season in 1917–18 to today: more than 65,000 games.
It isn't a quirk of one era. In every decade since the 1920s, between about 18% and 23% of goals came after the game-winner. Points follow the same pattern: about 204,000 of the 1.05 million goals and assists ever recorded.
Some games change shape entirely. On March 3, 1920, Montreal beat Quebec 16–3, still the most goals one team has scored in an NHL game. Set aside everything after Montreal's fourth goal and it reads as a 4–3 game.
What it does to the record book
Run the rule across careers and you get a second record book. The legends mostly stay put, but the gaps between them change.
| All-time goals | Official | What If | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Ovechkin | 929 | 736 | −193 |
| Wayne Gretzky | 894 | 646 | −248 |
| Brett Hull | 741 | 621 | −120 |
Ovechkin leads both lists. Gretzky gives up more than any other skater in history, 677 points or 23.7% of his career total, and still leads the What If points list by more than 670. Hull loses the smallest share of the three, about 16% of his goals to Gretzky's 28%, and climbs from fifth on the Official list to third.
None of this changes who the greats were. It changes how we measure the distance between them.
Impact, not blame
Are we saying those goals don't count? No. They were scored, they were real, and the Official numbers will always include them. No one should be faulted for scoring when the chance is there.
Our point is that a statistic can answer two different questions: how much did this player produce, and how much of it decided the result? Hockey has spent a century answering the first. What If Hockey puts the second on the scoreboard.
We chose the bluntest rule we could, on purpose. No model, no weighting, no judgment calls about which goals were "meaningful." The rule fits in one sentence, and anyone can check it against a box score. You can disagree with it, but you can't miss how it works.
Beyond hockey
We're starting with hockey because the data runs deep and a goal is a clean, countable event. But the question isn't really about hockey.
Basketball and football have "garbage time," the stretch where the result is settled and the numbers keep piling up. Baseball has built whole metrics around how much a single play moved a team's chances of winning. Every sport already senses that a statistic and an impact are not the same thing.
That instinct deserves a simple, public version: a stat that counts what decided the outcome, with the rule written down where anyone can check it. We'd like to see one for every sport. Hockey just gets to go first.
Where to look
Start with the Season Leaders to see who gains and loses ground in a single year, then the All-Time Leaders and Franchise Leaders for the long view. Each week the Press Box opens with a review of the games just played, including the goals that didn't count. The FAQ covers the finer points: overtime, edge cases, and what we don't cover yet.
What If Hockey is an unofficial, fan-made project, and every What If number is our own recalculation. We hope it changes how you watch the third period of a 6–1 game.