shutout

thumb|right|Goaltender Martin Brodeur holds several individual National Hockey League records for shutouts. In team sports, a shutout (U.S.) or clean sheet (UK) is a game in which the losing team fails to score. While possible in most major sports, they are highly improbable in some sports, such as basketball. 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.

==American football== Shutouts in American football are uncommon. 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. The difficulty of completing a shutout is compounded by the many ways a team can score in the game. For example, teams can attempt field goals, which have a high rate of success. The range of NFL caliber kickers makes it possible for a team with a weak offense to get close enough to the goalposts (within "field goal range") to kick a field goal. Of 2,544 regular season NFL games from 2000 to 2009, 89 (3.5%) were shutouts.