Sunday, February 28, 2010

Olympic Hockey Gold Medal Game

Some readers asked us about today's Gold Medal match-up between the US and Canada ice hockey teams. Based on a similar Monte Carlo approach that we used for the NY Times article, Canada is a heavy favorite. On average, Canada would beat the US team by an average of about 1.4 goals and would win around 70% of the games played.

There appears to be value on Canada because the US defeated Canada earlier in the tournament (despite getting outshot badly) -- as well as other recent game results (for example, the final score of Canada's semi-final game was closer than the actual game).

One big sport psychology factor on the US side is Ryan Miller, a hot goalie who is "in the zone" and is certainly playing with great focus!