Shutout

Shutouts are usually 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.

Keeping an opponent scoreless in American football requires a team's defense to be able to consistently shut down both pass and run offenses over the course of a game.

[2] The achievement of a shutout is much more difficult in Canadian football, where scoring and offensive movement is generally more frequent and a single point can be scored by kicking the ball into the end zone such that the other team does not, or cannot, return it or kick it out of the end zone.

[3] A theory as to the term's origin is that sports reporters used separate pieces of paper to record the different statistical details of a game.

[10] In ice hockey, a shutout (SO) is credited to a goaltender who successfully stops the other team from scoring during the entire game.

This has happened several times in NHL history: Clean sheets are not common in either rugby union or league, since it is relatively simple to score a penalty kick.

Generally, a team that is well-disciplined defensively, as well as behaviorally (not giving away penalty kicks), is most likely to not concede scores.