Goals against average

Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting circle and then into the goal. The match is won by the team that scores the most goals. Matches are played on grass, watered turf, artificial turf, synthetic field, or indoor boarded surface.

Ice hockey is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance, and shoot a closed, vulcanized, rubber disc called a "puck" into the other team's goal. Each goal is worth one point. The team which scores the most goals is declared the winner. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, one of whom is the goaltender. Ice hockey is a full contact sport, and is considered to be one of the more physically demanding sports.

Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively modified by European colonists, reducing the violence, to create its current collegiate and professional form.

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposite team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing side. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45-minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories, it is considered the world's most popular sport.

In ice hockey, a goal is scored when the puck entirely crosses the goal line between the two goal posts and below the goal crossbar. A goal awards one point to the team attacking the goal scored upon, regardless of which team the player who actually deflected the puck into the goal belongs to. Typically, a player on the team attempting to score shoots the puck with their stick towards the goal net opening, and a player on the opposing team called a goaltender tries to block the shot to prevent a goal from being scored against their team.

In ice hockey, the goaltender is the player responsible for preventing the hockey puck from entering their team's net, thus preventing the opposing team from scoring. The goaltender mostly plays in or near the area in front of the net called the goal crease. Goaltenders tend to stay at or beyond the top of the crease to cut down on the angle of shots. In the modern age of goaltending there are two common styles, butterfly and hybrid. Because of the power of shots, the goaltender wears special equipment to protect the body from direct impact.

In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting opposing shots on goal. Such positions exist in bandy, rink bandy, camogie, association football, Gaelic football, international rules football, floorball, handball, hurling, field hockey, ice hockey, roller hockey, lacrosse, ringette, rinkball, water polo, and shinty as well as in other sports.

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball that a player on the batting team, called the batter, tries to hit with a bat. The objective of the offensive team is to hit the ball into the field of play, away from the other team's players, allowing its players to run the bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate.

In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched. It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number of innings pitched and multiplying by nine. Thus, a lower ERA is better. Runs resulting from passed balls or defensive errors are recorded as unearned runs and omitted from ERA calculations.

The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ice hockey league in the world, and is one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. The Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season. The NHL is the fifth-wealthiest professional sport league in the world by revenue, after the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the English Premier League (EPL).

The National Lacrosse League (NLL) is a men's professional box lacrosse league in North America. The league is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.