Shutout
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In team sports, a shutout (a clean sheet in soccer) refers to a game in which one team wins without allowing the opposing team to score. While always theoretically possible, in some sports, such as basketball, they are practically impossible.
They are seen as a result of effective defensive play even though a weak opposing offense may be as much to blame. Some sports credit individual players, particularly goalkeepers and starting pitchers, with shutouts and keep track of them as statistics; others do not.
Baseball
If the starting pitcher can pitch the entire game without giving up a run he earns a complete game shutout. The currect record holder for most career shutouts is Walter Johnson with 110; the current active leader is Roger Clemens with 48 (tied with Kid Nichols for 25th all-time).
Though less than half of Johnson's record, Clemens' total is not likely to be reached by anyone else for a long time if at all as even star pitchers rarely earn more than 1 or 2 shutouts per season today with the heavy emphasis on pitch counts and relief pitching. This causes pitchers to frequently be taken out of the game in the 7th or 8th inning even though the opposing team hasn't scored a run. For a pitcher to get a complete game shutout today, it usually means either he threw an unusually low number of pitches, or a large amount of runs were scored by the pitchers own team (allowing them to give the pitcher a "chance" to complete the game on his own), or the team has a need that day to keep an unusually overworked bullpen rested if possible.
The term can also be used, however, to describe periods of time longer or shorter than one game. For instance, the efforts of a relief pitcher could be described as "three shutout innings" or a pitcher may have pitched a shutout over the "past 22 innings" (slightly over two full games.) See also: no-hitter and perfect game.
Ice hockey
In ice hockey, a shutout is given to a team whose goaltender successfully prevents the other team from scoring and plays the entire game. The current record holder for most regular season career shutouts is Terry Sawchuk with 103 (See All-Time Regular Season Shutouts).
NHL Complications
For the 2005/2006 National Hockey League regular season the NHL adopted a shoot out format. If the game remains tied after 60 minutes regulation time have elapsed (a condition often referred to as a regulation tie), a short five minute sudden death overtime (OT) is played four-on-four (with one fewer skater on each side, which opens up the ice and promotes scoring). If the five minute OT does not determine a winner, the game goes into shoot out (SO). While the shoot out has been widely adopted in European leagues and International Hockey it was long resisted by conservative voices in Canada and America as an inferior method to end a hockey game.
In the first round of the shoot-out, each team is granted three shooters. The shooters alternate between teams. Like baseball, the game ends as soon as the outcome is certain. For example, if one team scores with both of their first shots and the other team is denied (does not score) on both of their first two shots, the game will end immediately because the outcome is certain, without the third shooters on either team getting a shot. If the shoot-out remains tied after the first three shooters on each team, the shoot-out enters a sudden-death format, with each round granting each team one more shooter.
Once the shoot-out is decided, the winning team is awarded a goal as part of their score. This goal counts against the goaltender losing the shoot-out. In the exceptionally rare circumstance that a game ends in a regulation tie with a score of 0-0 (a double regulation shut-out), the shoot-out will result in the losing goaltender losing his shutout. This is true even if the winning goaltender allowed goals to be scored in the shoot-out. He only needs to win the shoot-out to retain his shut-out.
Effectively, if regulation time ends in a scoreless tie, whichever goaltender plays for the team winning the game in OT or SO will be awarded a shut-out. In rare cases, a team might send out their backup goaltender to face the SO, if their coach believes their backup is superior in that format. Only the NHL head office knows for certain whether the goaltender who achieved the shut-out in regulation would be officially awarded a shut-out if his team's back-up goaltender enters the game and wins the shoot-out.
Football (soccer)
In soccer, this is known as a clean sheet. In association football in Great Britain, a "clean sheet" is attributed to a team (or their goalkeeper) when they play an entire match without conceding a goal.
The term first appeared in the 1930s and it derived from sports reporting in which the reporter would use separate pieces of paper to record different events of the game. If one team does not let in a goal, then that team's "details of goals conceded" column would appear blank, hence leaving a clean sheet. For example, two teams are playing (Team A and Team B), Team A win 4-0, they keep the clean sheet whereas Team B have conceded 4 goals, they do not.
links
http://stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/PR/clsht.html - clean sheet statistics
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