Granted, there are Jedi mind-tricks available to improve your odds, but in theory at least, your chances of winning are 33.33%. That leaves you with a 66.67% chance that you'll either lose or draw.
Assuming that both you and your opponent are making your selections randomly, what is the likelihood that you will fail to win if you play two rounds? The answer is (2/3)2 or 44.36%. The likelihood of failing to win if you play three rounds is (2/3)3 or 29.54%.
Obviously, the more rounds that you play, the less likely you are to continue losing. It would be ludicrous to suggest that you could play 20 rounds without winning once. The odds of that are (2/3)20 or 0.03% or 1 in 3325.
Of course it's possible that you are just extremely unlucky. But if you were to play 20 rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors and not win a single round, you'd probably suspect that something was awry. Either your opponent was a mind-reader or you were somehow giving away your move. Only a dunce would believe that it was a fluke.
Let that scenario sink-in and hold it in your mind while we talk about something different in the next few paragraphs.
From 1926 until the end of the Original-6 era, the only blue teams were the Maple Leafs and the Rangers (unless you count the one season that the St. Louis Eagles existed). By the mid-70s, half of the league wore blue, and today, 11/30 teams wear primarily blue. Since 1926 (the first year the Stanley Cup was awarded exclusively to the NHL champions), about 36% of teams have worn blue. You can name a random NHL franchise, and it's more probable than not that at least one of their uniforms since 1996 has been predominantly blue. And that's not even counting the Avalanche and Penguins who have worn blue alternate jerseys in recent years. My point: blue has been the de-facto colour amongst hockey teams for decades now.
By the way, this unofficial NHL Uniforms website was an invaluable resource for this study.
If team colour had no bearing on success, we should expect to see a blue-coloured team win a Stanley Cup every 2 or 3 seasons. Even in an 88-year period (1927-2015), the odds of the NHL going 20 consecutive years without one of them winning would be 110:1.
We need to talk about this.
The NHL has a reputation as a copycat league, but this is a trend that nobody seems to be taking seriously or even noticing. Despite the Stanley Cup being persistently hoisted by red and/or black teams, while lifelong-blue teams such as the Maple Leafs, Blues, and Rangers possess notorious Stanley Cup droughts, blue continues to be as popular a colour as ever.
Admittedly, the Oilers and Islanders had dynasties back in the 1980s, and the Maple Leafs had some success in the 40s and 60s, but those all occurred before the age of parity. Since the introduction of the salary cap, those three teams have combined for five post-season appearances in 10 years. In a league where teams are no longer able to hoard superstars, the little things matter. Is jersey colour one of those things? Are blue teams at a psychological disadvantage?
This is a problem worth addressing for three reasons:
- It makes sense. A common objection to my claim is that correlation doesn't imply causation - it could simply be a coincidence, or else perhaps blue is an unoriginal colour that is selected by management teams who make unoriginal decisions that thus result in inferior teams.
Fortunately, I have multiple scientific studies on my side that support the idea that team colour has a causal relationship with team performance. A German study on soccer teams suggests that red teams score 10% more. This UK medical publication finds that competitors in red have higher testosterone levels. The Journal of Sports Sciences associates red shirt colour with long-term success. The Association for Psychological Science published an in-depth study on the 2004 Olympics that discovered that athletes wearing red substantially outperformed athletes wearing blue, particularly in aggressive sports. Jerald Kralik at Dartmouth University attributes this phenomenon to our primal urge to avoid the colour red as we subconsciously associate it with pain, danger, and intense emotion. - Nobody else is talking about it. I feel like I'm the only one who notices that blue teams always disappoint in the playoffs. Since 2006, there have been 21 occasions where a higher-seeded blue team was upset by a lower-seeded red/black team in the playoffs. Conversely, there have only been 9 occasions where a lower-seeded blue team upset a higher-seeded red/black team. I'm starting to feel guilty about how much I've profited from betting against blue teams.
- There's a simple fix. If my team loses because the other team is better, then I can begrudgingly accept that. If my team always loses because they're at a psychological disadvantage that can be remedied with a new shirt colour, then call a f*****g marketing meeting and change the shirt colour, damn it!
Before I continue, let me address some issues:
Q: What do I mean by "primary/major/base" colour?
A: I mean the colour that comprises more than 50% of the surface area of a team's home (non-white) jersey. This doesn't take into account alternate jerseys.
Q: What colour are the Avalanche?
A: They're burgundy, which is a shade of dark red. Thus, they fall under the "red" banner.
Q: What colour are the Sharks?
A: They're "Pacific Teal" which is a greenish shade of blue.
Q: How about the Wild?
A: They wore green with red alternate jerseys until 2007. Then they switched to red with green alternate jerseys. I categorize them under "green" until 2007, and "red" ever since.
Q: How many teams have worn something other than blue, red, black, or green?
A: Only four. The Flyers have worn orange through most of their history, except for the last decade when they mostly wore black. The Pittsburgh Pirates also wore orange back when they existed in the 1920s. The Kings have had an on-again, off-again relationship with purple (don't ask - it's complicated). And the Predators have worn gold for the past four seasons. Interestingly, every single team in the league wore either red, blue or black between 2007 and 2010.
So there you go. In a league in which a team can wear any colour they want, over 90% choose one of the same three colours, one of which isn't technically a colour.
But even black is at an all-time low in popularity right now. Only Anaheim, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles currently wear predominantly black uniforms, and they've all won a Stanley Cup in just the last 8 years. 2015 was the first year since 2006 where at least one of the Stanley Cup finalists wasn't wearing black. Add in the Chicago Blackhawks (see what I did there), and you've got the last 7 Stanley Cups. In a copycat league, why is nobody copying that?
Maybe I'm just bitter as a Canucks fan. The Canucks originally wore blue, but never managed to win a single playoff series until after they switched to black - most notably in 1982.
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| Photo Credit: canucks.nhl.com |
Those jerseys were reportedly designed by a colour psychologist. When they first came out, critics scoffed at the idea that the team would play better, only to watch them run to the Stanley Cup Finals with only the 11th-best regular season record. 12 years later, still wearing black, they made another Stanley Cup Final appearance with only the 14th-best regular season record. They were within one goal of defeating Mark Messier and the theoretically-much-better New York Rangers (who were wearing blue).
The Vancouver teams wearing black jerseys never seemed particularly good on paper, but they often exceeded expectations in the playoffs. In their last three seasons wearing black, the Canucks won 4 playoff series as a lower-seeded underdog. Since returning to blue in 1997, they have never won a playoff series as a lower-seed. Not once. They have, however, lost to a lower-seeded team wearing either red or black on six occasions, most recently the Calgary Flames this year. I'm tired of cheering for a team that, at best, meets expectations but never exceeds them.
So I ask, why? Why do so many teams adhere to a colour that was universally considered "delicate and dainty" as recently as the 1920s?
The answer may come from this study published by the University of British Columbia which suggests that blue is considered to be a psychologically "safe" colour which instills feelings of relaxation and creativity. Blue teams, therefore, perform better in games/sports that emphasize strategy over physicality, such as baseball. But red triggers feelings of urgency, focus, and quick decision making. Thus, you have a situation where the less-popular colour results in superior in-game performance.
The answer may come from this study published by the University of British Columbia which suggests that blue is considered to be a psychologically "safe" colour which instills feelings of relaxation and creativity. Blue teams, therefore, perform better in games/sports that emphasize strategy over physicality, such as baseball. But red triggers feelings of urgency, focus, and quick decision making. Thus, you have a situation where the less-popular colour results in superior in-game performance.
Only the Blues and Blue Jackets really need to wear blue. The Canucks logo is an orca - orcas are not blue. Neither are sharks, lightning bolts, or maple leaves. Even the Sabres, Rangers, Islanders, and Jets can be whatever colour they want to be.
There's a whole spectrum of colours out there, and yet only a handful of teams have ever tried anything outside of blue, red, or black. Two of them are clearly superior to the third, so those teams who choose to wear an inferior colour need to either innovate or adapt.
The Stanley Cup and its predecessors have been running for over a hundred years. This makes it much more likely that you'll get a random streak at some point - we're talking a streak of 20 out of over a hundred. Also, you shouldn't just count the odds that blue teams have a losing streak - you need to count the odds that *any particular colour* has a losing streak. If it's completely random, then it's just as likely that we'd get 20 red losses in a row. So if the colours are evenly divided between red, blue, and black, then you've got (roughly) three times the odds you're estimating. But even more important, the winning teams aren't chosen randomly - a team that wins one year is more likely to win in future years than a team that doesn't win. The Blackhawks won three times since 2010 for instance. So you're really drawing from a biased pool - essentially, a smaller pool - which makes it much more likely for something like this to happen.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting coincidence, but I think you need to put a lot more work into the statistics if you want to prove that there's any real correlation here.
https://xkcd.com/1122/
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
ReplyDeleteTo your first point, here's how I understand your argument:
The Stanley Cup has been running for 100 years. Therefore, it's not so unlikely that a certain 1/3rd of teams will fail to win the Stanley Cup consecutively for twenty years.
Over the roughly 100 years of the NHL's existence, an average of 36% of teams have worn blue each year. The likelihood of seeing 20 consecutive failures when you have a 36% likelihood of success is (as I demonstrated above) 7800:1. The likelihood of seeing 20 consecutive failures somewhere in a series of 100 attempts is 7800:80, or 97.5:1. You're correct that that's much more likely to occur out of random chance, but that's barely 1% probable. Thus it remains statistically significant.
To your second point, you said: "If the colours are evenly divided between red, blue, and black, then you've got roughly three times the odds your estimating.".
Firstly, there are very few black teams, and even those few black teams have only had one Stanley Cup drought lasting 20 years. Secondly, I cited three studies that support the idea that red teams are at a psychological advantage over blue teams, and I couldn't find a single study supporting the idea that blue teams are at a psychological advantage. If I had found that red teams had once gone through a 20-season Stanley Cup drought (the longest red-team drought is 6 seasons), I would dismiss that as a coincidence because the science didn't support it. But in this case, there IS science backing up the data.
To your third point - the fact that I'm drawing from a smaller pool because Stanley Cup winners are likely to repeat...I agree with you. But still, there have been 11 different Stanley Cup champions in the past 20 years, and 7 since the introduction of the salary cap. If you were to pick 7 random teams from the NHL, there's only a 2.4% chance that none of them would be blue. If you were to pick 11, you'd only have a 0.14% chance of avoiding blue. And you're also forgetting the fact that teams sometimes change uniforms. Tampa Bay won the Cup in black uniforms in 2004 then switched to blue. They could've repeated, but didn't.
To your final point, conveyed through the xkcd comic, I think you misunderstand my point. I'm not saying that it's impossible for a blue team to win the Stanley Cup in the salary cap era. The Lightning and Rangers both had a very good chance this year, and could very well win next year. My point is that jersey colour does make at least a small difference, and in a salary cap league where every team is fighting for every inch, it's a surprise that this has gone overlooked by so many teams.
As an addendum, I was thinking about how the Stanley Cup has never gone more than 6 seasons without being won by a red team. Even if half of the teams in the NHL were red (they're not), it would be probable that in a period of 100 years, they would go 7 years without a Stanley Cup at least once. The fact that they've never made it that far, despite comprising only 1/3rd of teams, boosts my argument further.
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