Does Cold Weather Change the Game?
Recently I looked at the importance of various phases of the game in winning playoff games. I analyzed and compared regular season games featuring only playoff-caliber opponents and playoff games themselves. This analysis began with the question of whether defense really does win championships, but since has focused on broader comparisons as well. In the last post, I found that over the past five seasons teams with the better run defense won slightly less than half of games between playoff-caliber opponents. But in the playoffs, the team with the better run defense won 67% of the time. With 114 regular season match-ups between playoff-caliber teams and 55 playoff games during the period studied, the difference may only be due to chance. However, in the comparison of regular season games and playoff games, pass offense, pass defense, and run defense did not show any differences nearly as large as run defense. [Edit: Based on a 2-sample unpaired t-test, the difference in winning percenta
