Jack Han wrote a cool piece the other day about the shootout and game theory. He had a number of different ideas, but I want to address one in particular.

I believe his point was as follows.

“As a shooter in the shootout, if you are unpredictable, the goalie won’t know what is coming and will play you straight up. If, however, you have one prominent move and a lesser-used secondary option, the goalie is likely to know that and cheat, allowing you to score more often on your secondary option, which overall will increase your effectiveness.”

I want to look at this point within the unrealistic context of an NHL goalie having complete information on the shooter’s true shootout talent, ie their base rate, and the percentage of the time in which he uses a primary move relative to a secondary one.

So let’s say you’re a league average shootout performer with two moves (let’s say a backhand deke and a backhand-forehand deke). When the goalie plays reactionary, you score on 33% of your shots. You can, however, decide to adjust this rate by leading the goalie into guessing by using your primary move significantly more than your secondary move. The goalie, as I mentioned above, knows how much you use each move, just not in which cases you will use which.

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