Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolven
It isn't that useful of a stat. It can give you a starting point to do analysis but it doesn't tell you a story or enable solid conclusions like the ones being thrown around here. If you want to prove a point you have to do a lot more lifting than to point at +/-.
~~Clipped for brevity~~
Anyway, ya. +/- is a weak stat and shallow analysis doesn't prove anything.
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I believe we are saying the same thing here when it comes to plus-minus, no? In fact, you state that it is a starting point to do analysis. I only stated that +/- merely tells you that there is something worth looking into. That's all. I definitely did not conduct any type of analysis, shallow or otherwise. Are you sure you are quoting the right post here, or did you stop reading after the first sentence? LoL
I think of +/- this way. It is an alarm. When it does go off, you have no idea why it is going off or what you should do about it other than to quickly do some research. Maybe it is a fire alarm, and you should rush outside for safety. Maybe it is the nearby zoo's alarm warning everyone to stay inside because the man eating tiger escaped. All you know is that there is a weird noise happening. It is up to you to investigate it further, as it doesn't tell you anything. To complicate matters, when it is silent, it doesn't mean that there isn't anything going either.
As for Andersson - (and I snipped that from the quote, to save space), we don't disagree. Yes, Andersson has had plenty of good games. However, like I stated in my post, his numbers all went down this year. +/- was a great 'flag' in his career because it points to him taking a huge step up in deployment (both in having to become the shutdown guy for the first time in his career, as well as being the anchor on a pairing which is also new to him). That's all the plus-minus has done in this case. There is nothing you said that I disagreed with... other than you saying my shallow analysis I did with +/- - there was no analysis done, shallow or otherwise.
There is little insight that plus minus can provide, and when used in any form of analysis, can actually prove disastrous. It is simply a flag that SOMETIMES can capture a significant change in something.
Examples that +/- flags and a possible misconception, followed by my own rationale:
Crosby has a -20 this year, which is an outlier in his career:
1) Crosby is aging and no longer has the wheels to be reliable defensively, and just chooses to focus on his offensive abilities.
2) The team sucks, and Crosby isn't an outlier at all on the team itself. The goalie hasn't been good, the defence hasn't been good. His underlying metrics, however, are still good defensively. His -20 is more a reflection of the team than of his play.
McDavid being a huge plus player in his career so far:
1) McDavid is a way better defensive center than Backlund is, and it isn't even close!
2) The eye-test (and probably underlying metrics) tells you that McDavid is a generational point producer, and is just outscoring his defensive issues.
Andersson becoming a -38 player:
1) He sucks now. Now that his other Swedish friends left town, he is disinterested and doesn't compete any longer. He wants out.
2) His deployment has drastically changed and he played through a significant injury.
There is no way anyone can look at a plus-minus and draw an accurate conclusion without at least understanding the player and the position that the player was put into. It was a tough season in which he had some growing pains, but it had to do with what was asked of him rather than him regressing and simply having an 'off' year (plus the injury!).
What I can 100% conclude based on Andersson's plus-minus is ONLY this:
If Andersson does get traded and irrespective of the return, there will be at least a few posters that from that new team and conclude that they paid too much, and they will cite his -38 as empirical evidence that Andersson was the worst defencemen on the team and one of the worst in the entire NHL.