Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Somewhat.
And maybe even mostly.
But some teams are going to allow the shooters more time, more space, and more opportunity to make plays, than other teams do. So it is never going to even out. And the problem is: we don't know the degree of that problem so we can't know how close it will, or won't, come to evening out. And that makes it very difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from the numbers.
And yet every day, we see people take these stats from individual games, and apply them like they are what's what.
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That's where you lose me.
The stats work in a large sample size.
But they also work in a one game sample size if that's the extent of the conclusion.
You shouldn't take 11 minutes of five on five ice time, and a terrible xGF% split and say the player sucks.
But if you want to say he had a tough night that's valid. If the opposition generates more of league average bad events against you than you generate for you it's likely a tough night. There are nuances for sure, but the objective assignment of expected goals in both directions is from a model. And that model would suggest a tough night if the other team had more instances than you did by a large margin; even in just one game.