Get in fights? Gettin’ paid
In this month’s issue of the Atlantic, there’s a story about how, since 1996, players that fight get paid primarily to drop the gloves make more money per fight than the average playmaker does per assist, meaning that on some level, fighting is more valuable to NHL GMs than goalscoring.
By fighting, lower-skilled wing players can create scoring opportunities for more-talented centers by intimidating opposing teams and keeping their skilled defenders in the penalty box. While a player earns a “wage premium” of $10,925 when he assists on a goal, they calculated, he earns $18,135 for winning a fight and $11,993 even for losing a fight.
It also shows that fighting can indeed play a role in winning championships. There’s a lot of math involved, and frankly I don’t understand any of it, but it’s fairly interesting.
Here’s a formula that shows how this whole thing was determined: LEVELj t = β Xj t + γ Vj t + δt + αj + εj t
Exactly.
Luckily, the whole paper is only about 12 pages and then there are a lot of graphs and things of that nature for blockheads like me to go “Ohhhhhhh lines show numbers!”
I do have one problem with this study though. The people that put it together, John P. Haisken-Denew of the German Institute for the Study of Labor and Matthias Vorell of the Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research, thinks that this is a bad thing, and that the NHL should fine teams that get in fights twice the fighter’s value to “ensure that the sport values skill and finesse over ‘bad boy’ enforcers.”
Take that kind of talk outside, peaceniks. This is hockey.
