Quote:
Originally Posted by FBI
Ricardo why do you always use +/- in your posts?
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+/- is the only consistent unbiased "advanced" stat that there is. A goal is scored. A player is either on or off the ice. There is no human interference or judgement involved.
Goals scored is pretty solid, assists are even questionable.... make a pass that is deflected by an opponent and you still get might get credited with an assist.
All the other advanced stats are tainted by the analysis of the base event.
SOG , Saves, Blocked shots, Shots directed at net, missed shots, face offs won are all arbitrary and will vary from rink to rink and off ice official to off ice official. If you want to see arguments as to how bad hits , Give away take aways and blocked shots are you just have to go back and review the arguments against my attempt to quantify player toughness and physically.
The advanced statistics were developed to expand the number of events. There are not enough goals scored to make +/- it statistical significant. So they added some sketchy stats. While you have reviews and credit changes in goals and and assists I have never seen or heard of a player or agent arguing the validity of a SOG/save as opposed to a missed shot and yet these are the stats that are involved in in rating the players.
You have seen game where basically any time a goalie touches a puck he is credited with a save. It really will prop up the Goalies sv % and the possession stats of his opponents. Everything snowballs from there, the Quality of teammates and Quality of opposition is influenced.
Obviously +/- are not equal across teams. There needs some sort of normalization to make them more meaningful in comparing a player on the Stars/Blues to a player on the Flames or Oilers.
However if Ferland , Bennett and Hamilton, Bollig huge minus on a team with Backlund having a +10 clearly indicate that Backlund has a much greater contribution to winning than what is reflected in goals and assists. I feel this concept is transferable across relatively equal teams.
Do the advanced stats show that some of huge plus/minus negatives are driving position and are just unlucky?
I have not seen advanced stats using +/- in the same manner as corsi . ie quality of linemates, opposition or relative +/- on the team. There is no breakdown of +/- related to offensive and defensive zone starts.
So that is why I like to include +/- in my basic stat lines in player comparison.
Posted on this thread as it could not get any further off topic.
