Quote:
Originally Posted by The Cobra
Actually, you can.
In isolation, +/- is a useless stat. In context, it may have some value.
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Yeah, yeah. I know all the arguments for and against the stat.
While we are being pedantic, I will then beg to differ on your selection of word ‘useless’. It absolutely benefits from context. But it is not useless. Fact is that at even strength, that many more goals were scored by the Flames than against. Outscoring other teams wins games. Players who are on the ice for more goals for than against help teams win these games. They most likely have made a useful contribution to their team, especially when that number is large.
Often the context you reference is that there are 5 other guys on the ice. Sometimes you have players that get an absolute number that looks good by virtue of a team being good.
A team that scores, say, 40 more than it allows in even strength situations will have generally higher +/- across the board than one that is more break even, so player on team x would have a different number on team y. On those teams, it is often interesting to look at numbers compared to their teammates.
Derek Ryan and Mark Jankowski had pretty different +/- numbers.
Fact is for Brodie that his +/- was, what, top 10 in the entire league?
At some point, when your number is high relative to most of your teammates, and over 97 percent of the skaters in the league, you must not be the detriment that some knuckleheads hear are trying to paint you
So in my opinion, you can’t argue with +29 (enough to try to make the case that some people want to)