4

Have been watching hockey a bit more recently and tonight's game didn't have a lot of scoring early on. That got me wondering how often the dreaded 0-0 scoreline comes up in different sports (defensive struggles aren't so bad, but I've certainly heard disparaging nicknames for them!).

Specifically, I am thinking of soccer, hockey, baseball, and (American) football as the four team sports where 0-0 seems fairly feasible. I suppose there are a few others like lacrosse and water polo.

Whether they have overtime, shootouts, or draws, I'm just interested in how often they complete regulation 0-0 (though statistics on how often extended time also ends 0-0 aren't discouraged).

| improve this question | |
  • 1
    Here are some stats from EPL: In 126 Years, English Football Has Seen 13,475 Nil-Nil Draws. – Martin May 21 '17 at 9:34
  • Great! Sounds quite near being a good answer to me if you gave a few of the salient points. I expect there may well be separate answers for each sport, since different people know the sources for such information (if they're even easy to get)? I appreciate you digging that up! – JeopardyTempest May 21 '17 at 9:41
  • 1
    There was not much digging involved. All I did was to enter nil nil draw statistics into Google. If you really think that this might be a start for an answer about football part, feel free to make an answer out of it. (Perhaps making it community wiki might be a good idea, if you want other users to contribute to the answer.) – Martin May 21 '17 at 9:47
  • Both rugby variants (union and league) occasionally have 0-0 draws as well. – Philip Kendall♦ May 21 '17 at 10:39
  • 1
    @ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀᴍɪɴᴅ_ᴇᴅ Great to see there's such discussion, as I was at a loss how to tag it! I was definitely hopeful to go a bit beyond major 4, at least into soccer, and hopeful to see a few others in the comparison too. The inclusion of the phrase was more to prevent it from being wildly open-ended (indeed, no interest in tiddly winks or middle school football stats) and getting ire/deflecting it from the main interest subjects. I'll certainly weigh in on the tags, as I think they'd be useful! – JeopardyTempest May 25 '17 at 19:48
10

In the NHL, there have been 41 games tied 0-0 after overtime since the introduction of the shootout in 2005 (meaning they would have been recorded as a 0-0 tie in the past), which is 0.25% of games. And there have been 189 0-0 ties in history (dating back to 1924) [games are double-counted in link]. There have been 122 games that were 0-0 after regulation only to be ended in overtime (not a shootout). This gives 352 total 0-0 games after regulation. Note that this is just regular season, and not playoffs.

In the NFL, there have only been two 0-0 games [games are double-counted in link]. The last one occurred in 1943. I couldn't find any other games that went into overtime tied 0-0 (checked each box score individually), either, which surprises me. Those 0-0 ties were Detroit against the Chicago Cardinals, and Detroit again against the NY Giants.

For the MLB, I was able to find at least 620 games that were tied 0-0 after 9 innings by looking up games where that took extra innings and the losing team had 0 runs. There appear to be a handful every year by changing the dates. I am not a subscriber, so I cannot verify the total or see more games. This also does not take into account games that were tied 0-0 after 9 innings where the losing team managed at least 1 runs, so there are more.

In the top 4 tiers of English soccer, from 1888 through 2014, 13,475 games (7.2% of matches) ended 0-0.

Seems like it's nearly impossible in the NFL, not too uncommon in the NHL, very common in the MLB, and almost weekly in English soccer.

| improve this answer | |
  • for soccer the answer just will be too long.. is not unusual... – gbianchi May 23 '17 at 13:48
  • 1
    An important point is that baseball can't end with a tie while the other sports can. So while it may be common to have 0-0 after 9, the game never ends that way. And I wouldn't consider a handful common. There are about 2,430 baseball games in one year. – jmh Aug 14 '17 at 20:49

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.