...to:

If that was an NBA game it would be the middle of the third quarter and they would have a chance to right the ship.

...NBA teams get to advance the ball to the frontcourt after a timeout in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter and overtime, and they don't have the stupid running clock at the end of quarters like CBB has at the end of the first half.

I dislike your top analysis. However I do have trouble disagreeing. Goalies have gotten better despite everything the NHL can do. Moving the goal and blue lines, shrinking equipment, plus rule changes for players to benefit offense all should have contributed to more goals. I don't know that changing goalie equipment again is a good idea and I don't think that posts would help either.

One idea that's actually kind of dangerous but might work is to increase the net vertically. It's 4'x6' now, what if it was 4'6" x 6'? The added height would make the butterfly less of a weapon, and it would also make higher shots more valuable, and therefore could discourage everyone from standing around in front of the net.

Question #1 made my brain hurt.  

Very interesting.  One quibble:

You can load the bases in baseball and come away with nothing; ripping off a 30-yard run in football is always worth something. 

As I understand it, the argument is that the 30-yard run, even if you don't score on that possession, affects the probability of the opponent scoring on the next possession.  This is what is meant by football having "memory," yes?

However, baseball does have memory, too.  Pitch count matters.  Times through the order matter.  If Miguel Cabrera bats five times in a game, the odds of him producing a run in that game are better than if he bats four times.  If you burn through an opposing bullpen faster, you're more likely to see a worse pitcher.  In fact, in this way, memory exists from game to game in a way that football, nor any of the mentioned sports, does not have.  If I force you to use your bullpen too much in the first two games of a three-game series, my odds of winning the third game improve.

In other words, if I load the bases in the 7th with my 2-3-4 hitters and my 5-6-7 hitters pop up, my 2-3-4 guys are now due up in the 9th instead of the 10th (an inning which may not happen.)  If I then load the bases the next inning with 8-9-1, my odds of scoring a run are improved because I loaded the bases in the 7th.

Baseball is still the most ridiculously random sport - and anecdotal evidence of a regional 4 seed winning the entire CWS is a small piece of proof.  But memory does exist.

Not sure I buy "you get only 9 chances in baseball."  You could as easily conclude you get 27--every batter has a chance to hit a home run.  Or 27 + number of walks + number of hits because that means more guys have a chance to hit HRs.  In football too, you can try to score on every play if you want to.  Seems the real reason baseball if less predictable is that so much turns on the pitching, which varies from day to day, unlike an NBA starting lineup.  I don't think that makes the sport more random, it just means the outcome is more variable because of the way the game is structured.

Basketball is not random at all. Brian well-described how consistent the NBA is at determining a champion, for better or for worse; the "best team" almost always wins. 

Baseball, unlike other sports, is designed with the randomness factored in. One game is not meant to be a true test of a team's full ability, particularly since only one pitcher can start on any given day. Thus, regular seasons have a different meaning; conversely, post-seasons are rather bizarre. 

Hockey's randomness is not just a recent phenomenon, either. There have frequently been so-so regular season teams that have made big playoff runs, and of course all Wings fans remember what happened in 1996 after the greatest regular season ever. Perhaps things are amplified now, but hockey has long had this issue.

Brian's idea concerning goalie effectiveness is barking up the right tree, at the very least. Goalies are so good now that they are pretty much expected to stop every shot they can see and generally do. The rapid rise in goalie competence over the past 20 years has completely changed the game, and was an un-addressed root cause of much of the offensive doldrums that were the drive behind significant rule-changes after the lost season. 

Anyone who watches film of, say, the Gretzky Oilers will be astonished both by the style of goaltending and the impressive number of goals scored by simple shots that would be no challenge today. Equipment is one factor, but goalies just play better now. The old stand-up goalie is a thing of the past. 

I love it when players sell out to block shots, but when one combines the danger of the play with how effectively it throttles offense from the point, one wonders if limiting a player's ability to block shots should be limited. Perhaps ban players from leaving their feet to intercept pucks between the faceoff dots or something. Yeah, it would eliminate some sell-out play, but it would certainly increase offense. Make two-on-ones easier to convert, too.

Limit shot-blocking, widen the goal, shrink goalie equipment. I think it would all help.

and ability to execute the power slide.

Speaking of the unsuitability of single-elimination tournaments in hockey, it should be mentioned that the NCAA hockey tournament has a great event for it's last four teams but is otherwise just about the worst-executed playoff imaginable on so many different levels. 

Single-elimination to start with is challengingly random; a team can have a bad break or two, a bad call, or a bad bounce and have its season end. What's worse, their season probably ends at some neutral site that is 25% full of fans that are all there for the one team that is kinda sorta close by. Instead of the season peaking in the postseason, then, it ends with a heartless whimper.

When the issue of major junior comes up, we gripe about them paying players and making dishonest promises, and of course that is true. It remains a good product, however, that plays more games (what kid complains about playing more?) and has a killer post-season that almost every team qualifies for and starts at best-of-seven from the bottom rung. Thanks to their aggressive draft system, most teams that are decently well-run will be good enough to get to a conference finals at least once during a player's career. The teams that are lifting the best players (London, Kitchener, etc) are also rather good at being good enough to make even deeper playoff runs every year, and every game is packed with rabid fans.

This totally smokes the NCAA playoff system, where only the Frozen Four shines as an experience and most teams never make it that far. It's a hard sell. 

And teams lose by random chance. 

The problem with baseball regular seasons isn't that they aren't representative of the best team during that period, but playoffs are basically a different animal compared to the regular season in a way you don't see with other sports.  In baseball, you can't roll out Verlander every game; you have to rest him and rely on your "lesser" pitchers 3 out of every 4 games.  It would be like Michigan playing Gardner one game, then having to role with Morris, Bellomy, and random backup the next three games.  The leader of one-half of your team is a non-factor for most of the post-season, introducing far more variability.  And even that said, it's not like Cleveland is winning championships when they get into the playoffs; the Red Sox were one of the best teams all year, so just because they didn't have the best record we are talking about fine-grain differences at best.  Probably the only egregious underdog I've seen was the 2006 Cardinals, and even that was due in part of injuries and the like for parts of the year.

To me, the most random sport has always been hockey, just because a hot goalie can keep a team in any game.  With games usually decided by a goal, packing it in really is a viable option compared to even soccer, where the wide pitch forces teams to open up the zones quite a bit more, plus the (lowered) physicallity gives more freedom to the skill players.

I've been thinking for a while that there should be some sort of illegal defense rule since so many teams just compact their defense to the front of the net.  There are times where if you're shooting from the blue line you may have to get the puck past 4 defenders, and several of your own players, just to get the puck to the goalie, let alone beat him.  If there was a zone / key in front of the goal that only a certain amount of defensive players could be in at a time, otherwise a penalty, it might open things up a bit.  

 

The protective equipment for players is so good now there is no fear for them to block shots.  Goalie leg pads are still too big.  Were there a lot of goalies getting hurt by shots in the 80's / early 90's that required the leg pads to expand so much?

 

Another idea: pucks that deflect off the netting should be "in-play".  This would keep the action going and reward teams applying pressure in the offensive zone.  Increasing the height of the goal would create a safety issue, with an increase in shots at head level.

 

Love hockey but I get annoyed when so many shots get blocked or teams have to employ the strategy of intentionally shooting wide in hopes of a fortuitous bounce off the boards.

I disagree with Brian here.  As I understand it, soccer is very random, due to the very low number of scoring events per game (0-0 joke goes here).  However, in comparison to American sports leagues, there is a much, much larger disparity in talent between the best and worst teams, and this helps to mitigate the chaos.  In Europe, not only is there no salary cap, there are also no roster limits, drafts, or revenue sharing. 

If you want an example close to home, look at results from early MLS years (really, up until a few years ago).  There was essentially zero correlation between playoff success and regular season record. 

Which of the corners is going to move to safety to improve depth there?  That's what I want to know.  Stribling has the size, but I know the coaches want big corners so a future of Stribling/Peppers sounds appealing.  Any thoughts on those options?

My big frustration with basketball is that the "randomness" is so tied to officiating.  I understand that it is impossible to be good at basketball officiating.  But it changes games perhaps more than any other sport's officials do.  Making matters worse, at this point you now see officials in football and baseball being held accountable via replay and slow motion.  In basketball they rarely show bad calls or even discuss the impact of lousy officiating on the outcome of the game.  I think it has forced improvement in the other sports but remains awful in basketball. 

Of the sports you mention, baseball is the only one where the defense puts the ball in play, and the defense cannot score. In addition you can play to avoid good talent (intentional walk, over shifting the defense) in a way that other sports can't. Basketball has the advantage that it is almost impossible to neutralize a star, because he can always bring the ball up; you can't keep it out of his hands. Soccer and hockey stars are more limited but still can start with the ball. Football has the issue that often it's the weakest player rather than the best that determines success or failure. The heart of baseball is the batter-pitcher matchup. The heart of football is controlling the line of scrimmage.

I really enjoyed this discussion and the linked articles about randomness in sports--great stuff. But I'm a big Ron Fartburg fan and didn't appreciate Brian's Canadian brother belittling him (linked article about NHL overtime loser points).