Zane Hassoun

This week I read a short paper by Cliff Asness and Aaron Brown: Pulling the Goalie: Investment Lessons from Watching Hockey. It’s short and punchy, but I think it hits something important that shows up all the time in real decision-making, in markets, management, even job searching.

The basic idea is simple: when a hockey team is down by one, it should pull the goalie way earlier than most people think, usually with 5 or 6 minutes left. Mathematically, it’s optimal. The chance of conceding an empty-net goal increases, but the upside (scoring while 6-on-5) is worth it when you’re losing anyway. It’s just a skewed payoff: you’re trading a slightly worse loss for a decent shot at a win. A basic expected value argument.

But almost no coach does it. Why? Because when it doesn’t work, you look stupid. You lose 4–1 instead of 2–1 and take heat for being "too aggressive," even if the math backed you. It’s a good reminder that expected value isn’t always what gets optimized, career risk often dominates statistical logic. In theory, loss is loss; in practice, how you lose matters. The paper doesn’t lean hard into the math, but the intuition is a nice example of dynamic programming under pressure, optimizing a control variable (when to pull) given asymmetric downside perception.

I liked it because it’s not just about hockey, it’s about making uncomfortable decisions when you know they’re right. The world’s full of late goalie pulls.

Maximize EV, not approval. Pull the goalie. (But don't blame me when you get fired :) )