@JeopardyTempest wrote: "Meanwhile my English soccer team brought its goalie forward yesterday at the end to try to score (to no avail). At least the offside rules for hockey perhaps slightly better avail pulling the goalie."

There's a few factors at play here:

1) In hockey, when you pull the goalie, you get to replace them with a regular skater; in football, you just get your goalie going upfield, and he's probably not go the skill set you'd ideally want for scoring that last chance goal.

2) While goal difference is in theory an NHL tiebreaker, in practice it's not as the other tiebreakers come in first - hence it really doesn't matter if you lose 3-1 rather than 2-1. In football, goal difference is the first tiebreaker and championships, promotion, regulation etc are not uncommonly won on the basis of goal difference. Hence there's a much bigger downside to pulling the goalie.

3) In hockey, pulling the goalie gives you 6 on 5 in terms of skaters (or a 20% advantage). In football, it's 11 on 10 (or a 10% advantage).

4) As you say, the offside rule, combined with the size of the pitch, makes it much easier to score an empty net goal in football than hockey.

5) Probably some more stuff I haven't thought of yet :-)