Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
If you can consistently push the game into the other end of the ice, that's actually the best defense.
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But there is the aspect of this statistic that is much more reflective of team play than the individual player. Plus-minus can be useful, but it needs to be weighed comparatively for individuals to their team-mates. Gaudreau looks like a decent defensive player, given that he leads the Eagles in plus-minus, but more tellingly, the margin of difference between him, his line mates, and then the rest of the teams is pretty vast. Gaudreau is + 31. Arnold is #2 on the team at +28. Hayes is a distant third at +23, and is one of four BC players with a rating above +20. If Gaudreau ranked closer to his teammates, then I would have some concerns about his defensive game.
By way of analogy, Nail Yakupov sports the worst plus-minus in the entire NHL, and he owns this number because he is minus-7 worse than the next-worst forward, and he is worse than the next-worst forward on the Oilers roster by
eleven goals.