Fighting behavior and winning National Hockey League games: a paradox

To assess a relationship between fighting behavior and winning games in the National Hockey League (NHL), 4,240 NHL game summaries from five consecutive seasons (1987-88--1991-92) were examined. Analysis of the relation between a team's number of major fighting penalties and final league standings gave four significant negative correlations indicating a substantial inverse relationship, i.e., the larger the number of fights, the lower the final standings tended to be, although one significant positive correlation was obtained for those teams finishing in the bottom half of the standings. The results question the popular belief that fighting and winning NHL games are favorably associated. Explanations are suggested.