Evening, all..

I have a question (and it may be a dumb one) that CNS suggested I turn over to the great and good of SCH. It's about Stats. For those that don't know I'm an Irish chap who's been following Hockey for a few years now. I've been happily picking up the nuances of the game as I go along but one thing that has really whizzed over my head like a puck into Luongo's five-hole is the number-crunching.

Now, by no means am I slagging off Stats, it's just alien to a European sports fan. It seems to be unique to North American sports. When we talk about stats in Soccer or Rugby it generally means having an encyclopaedic memory for who played where in what game and what the score was. Cricket is probably the most stat-heavy sport in this neck of the woods and even that doesn't get near the US level. The minute detail that US fans go into is amazing.

So I guess this is kind of a multi-question.. is it a chicken and egg situation with Hockey (and the others) where the action tends to be calculated in milli-seconds (I think this is unique to the US too.. your sports tend to be quick, incredibly intense bursts followed by downtime.. less so in Hockey and Basketball) tht leads to the ferverish number-crunching?

Is it just a North American thing? Do US/Canada sports fans just want to analyse the action that much?

Or is it something else?

I'm just throwing this out there, again with the greatest respect for Stats.. I'm not sugesting for a second that it's wrong, i just don't really understand it.

Any ideas, folks? You'd be helping my Hockey education.