Are possession stats the best way to evaluate a player

[LyricalLyricist]

I don't think people have adopted advanced stats at the expense of everything else. I think it comes across that way because they can be (and are) used in an argument when comparing players.

The nice thing about these numbers is that they are objective fact. It's not like one guy who says "he plays well" and the other says "he really didn't." At the very least we have numbers we can appeal to.

And people seem to think advanced stats= corsi. There's more to it than that. And a lot of it isn't all that complicated. Points/60 for example is an advanced stat...

All numbers are objective. They have no bias, it's people who use them that create the story.

Advanced stats are no more objective than regular stats.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

All numbers are objective. They have no bias, it's people who use them that create the story.

Advanced stats are no more objective than regular stats.

I don't distinguish between 'advanced' and 'regular' stats. They're all stats...

Should we say JVR is a crappy player because his rel CA stats suck? I don't think so, esp when the rest of his numbers are pretty good. But it's a good start to a discussion...

 

[BaseballCoach]

I'm a numbers guy at heart and I think the way people have adopted advanced stats at the expense of everything has been brutal.

Quite frankly +- is a guide and so are 'advanced' stats. No one stat can say everything about someone. This is a fact of life.

Advanced stats are meant to give us MORE tools to evaluate someone, not erase the old ones.

+- relative to teammates is still important because it shows how you either aid or deter the team from winning. However, advanced stats showing your usage also plays a factor.

With hockey advanced stats aren't as clear cut as other sports. It's essential people don't act like one thing says everything or that some things don't matter. Everything matters and watching the game does as well.

The truth is that +/- measures goals, and since games are won by scoring more goals than the other team, +/- can NEVER be useless!

The day that the game is awarded to the team with the most shot attempts is the day Corsi will be more important than +/-.

WARNING: the following are baseball examples meant to illustrate a point about RELEVANCE. If you don'T understand baseball, skip to the last paragraph.

Forty-two years ago, when I was 15, I started to create my own statistical toolbox for baseball coaching. I found two traditional measures were making my decisions WORSE rather than better.

One was EARNED run average. They don't award the game victory to the team that scores the most earned runs (or gives up the least). The winning team is the one that scored more RUNS, period.

A pitcher who has the misfortune of seeing the potential third out botched by an error gets a free pass for EVERY SINGLE RUN THAT SCORES FROM THAT POINT ON IN THAT INNING. They are all considered UNEARNED. As a coach, that is terrible. I NEED to know which pitchers get out of jams and which fold like a house of cards. Over the course of a whole season, errors can be seen as equivalent to a bad bounce on a ground ball.

There is no reason to believe that some of my pitchers should suffer more from errors than others, in the long run. Except....... pitchers who get more strikeouts will experience less errors, and guess what, that DOES matter! So I learned to use Run Average and not Earned Run Average.

Second, let's talk about batters. On base percentage excludes the times a player reaches on an error. But the problem is, the game is won by scoring more runs, and when guys get on base on errors, THEIR RUNS STILL COUNT!

So I thought about it some more and realized that guys who hit the ball harder provoked more errors, and also VERY FAST guys provoked more errors. Well, guess what again - these things are RELEVANT. Guys who struck out a lot, or slow guys who hit the ball weakly rarely benefited from an error. Therefore, an accurate evaluation had to take into account the beneficial effect of putting the ball in play and giving your team a chance to benefit from an error. So I started to include "reached on an error" as an "on-base event". I then noticed that the fastest guys and the strongest guys did indeed reach base more times on errors, and therefore the chances they had to score a run were higher than the other guys.

The best predictor of success is often the simplest. Run average for a pitcher, TRUE ON-BASE percentage for a hitter, plus-minus for a hockey player.

Plus-minus does have to be adjusted for quality of teammate and quality of opposition, but SO DOES SHOT ATTEMPTS!

My feeling is that once we make adjustments for QOT and QOO, plus-minus is probably more reflective of real success than Corsi. If the shots you take are more dangerous, and the shots you give up are less dangerous, you should have a better score. Corsi does not do that, +/- DOES! Ideally we would measure "high danger scoring chances" to eliminate the goaltender effect, but within the same team, over a whole season, +/- should be fine so long as we can keep in context the QOT and QOO.

 

[BaseballCoach]

I don't distinguish between 'advanced' and 'regular' stats. They're all stats...

How do you fell about +/- ? It's not an advanced stat, but it is a stat.

 

[gunnerdom]

The truth is that +/- measures goals, and since games are won by scoring more goals than the other team, +/- can NEVER be useless!

The day that the game is awarded to the team with the most shot attempts is the day Corsi will be more important than +/-.

WARNING: the following are baseball examples meant to illustrate a point about RELEVANCE. If you don'T understand baseball, skip to the last paragraph.

Forty-two years ago, when I was 15, I started to create my own statistical toolbox for baseball coaching. I found two traditional measures were making my decisions WORSE rather than better.

One was EARNED run average. They don't award the game victory to the team that scores the most earned runs (or gives up the least). The winning team is the one that scored more RUNS, period.

A pitcher who has the misfortune of seeing the potential third out botched by an error gets a free pass for EVERY SINGLE RUN THAT SCORES FROM THAT POINT ON IN THAT INNING. They are all considered UNEARNED. As a coach, that is terrible. I NEED to know which pitchers get out of jams and which fold like a house of cards. Over the course of a whole season, errors can be seen as equivalent to a bad bounce on a ground ball.

There is no reason to believe that some of my pitchers should suffer more from errors than others, in the long run. Except....... pitchers who get more strikeouts will experience less errors, and guess what, that DOES matter! So I learned to use Run Average and not Earned Run Average.

Second, let's talk about batters. On base percentage excludes the times a player reaches on an error. But the problem is, the game is won by scoring more runs, and when guys get on base on errors, THEIR RUNS STILL COUNT!

So I thought about it some more and realized that guys who hit the ball harder provoked more errors, and also VERY FAST guys provoked more errors. Well, guess what again - these things are RELEVANT. Guys who struck out a lot, or slow guys who hit the ball weakly rarely benefited from an error. Therefore, an accurate evaluation had to take into account the beneficial effect of putting the ball in play and giving your team a chance to benefit from an error. So I started to include "reached on an error" as an "on-base event". I then noticed that the fastest guys and the strongest guys did indeed reach base more times on errors, and therefore the chances they had to score a run were higher than the other guys.

The best predictor of success is often the simplest. Run average for a pitcher, TRUE ON-BASE percentage for a hitter, plus-minus for a hockey player.

Plus-minus does have to be adjusted for quality of teammate and quality of opposition, but SO DOES SHOT ATTEMPTS!

My feeling is that once we make adjustments for QOT and QOO, plus-minus is probably more reflective of real success than Corsi. If the shots you take are more dangerous, and the shots you give up are less dangerous, you should have a better score. Corsi does not do that, +/- DOES! Ideally we would measure "high danger scoring chances" to eliminate the goaltender effect, but within the same team, over a whole season, +/- should be fine so long as can keep in context the QOT and QOO.

I don't think so. The +/- will never really be good because it doesn't account for the quality of the goaltending. The reason shots are used over goals is because it takes away the goaltending aspect of it, at least for possession stats.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

How do you fell about +/- ? It's not an advanced stat, but it is a stat.

It's a meaningless stat that rewards people for being on good teams and punishes people for being on bad teams. Goaltending esp is a huge factor. Moreover, it can yield undeserving results for being on the ice when a play the player had little involvement with results in a score for or against.

Other numbers are available that are much better at evaluating how good a player is.

And we know that there are all kinds of numbers out there that probably would give us even more insight. Hopefully we'll see more publishing of these kinds of numbers in the future. Right now we get little Twitter blurbs about "loose puck recoveries" and "total possession time"... but as far as I can see, we don't have access to those numbers and we don't know the context of some of them. The numbers we do have can give us a quick snapshot of how the player's performed though. And if it yields a weird result we can dig in further. We don't just look at one number and call it a day... we can go beyond just one number. We can look at who they played with and how they played without certain players...

Over the past four years David Desharnais for example has a pretty good CF% of 52%. When he plays with Max Paccioretty though it soars to 54.4 and without him it's 48.2%. That's a lot more useful in terms of knowing something about this player than looking at a +/- number.

 

[get25]

The truth is that +/- measures goals, and since games are won by scoring more goals than the other team, +/- can NEVER be useless!


...

but within the same team, over a whole season, +/- should be fine so long as can keep in context the QOT and QOO.

How do you fell about +/- ? It's not an advanced stat, but it is a stat.

I don't think so. The +/- will never really be good because it doesn't account for the quality of the goaltending. The reason shots are used over goals is because it takes away the goaltending aspect of it, at least for possession stats.

In the same team, it does makes sense.

Unless a d-men only plays with Price (and never with Condon for example).
Overall it does reflect some of the performance in the same team.

Now from one team to another, you need shots.

But even in the same team, shots will not give you the whole picture.
Quality of opposition needs to be factored in.
Pretty sure Weber and Josi had better opposition than Elllis and Ekholm.

 

[BaseballCoach]

It's a meaningless stat that rewards people for being on good teams and punishes people for being on bad teams. Goaltending esp is a huge factor. Moreover, it can yield undeserving results for being on the ice when a play the player had little involvement with results in a score for or against.

Other numbers are available that are much better at evaluating how good a player is.

It's not a meaningless stat. The fair thing to say is it must be understood in context. The most important context is the team you are playing on. You cannot easily compare a player on one team with a player on another. Quality of Teammate and Opponents are also important.

The objection you raise with regard to just coming on the ice or off the ice is EXACTLY Applicable to shot metrics as well. The shot taken against your team when you just arrived on the ice is recorded against you, whether it went in the net or not.

Having said all that, as a coach or fan, I want to know a player's +/- on MY team. I have a good idea of how the player is used. Manny Malhotra was not going to be a plus player the way he was used in Montreal. So his -6 in 58 games of 10 minutes each was not terrible, in my opinion.

When you look at the two components of +/-, which are GF and GA, ironically these are used in advanced stats a lot. They just like to divide by 60 minutes, and I get that. Once again, QOT and QOO would be extremely relevant.

Goaltending is an issue, but IMPORTANTLY, the quality of goaltender has been shown to be FAR LESS of an influence on save percentage than the quality of scoring chance.

Carey Price has a worse average on dangerous slot shots than Ben Scrivens does on long easy shots.

A forward who is lazy backchecking and permits lots of 3-on-2s against his team might have a decent Corsi if he does this twice a game, resulting in one dangerous shot, while being on the ice for 1-2 extra harmless shots at the other end (say a shoot-in done by putting it on net from the red line). However, the chance of a goal against is much higher when surrendering odd-man rushes than the chance of getting a goal on a long shoot-in. So I'm interested in knowing the overall result of my player's activities in terms of goals.

If he has a Corsi of 51% on a team that is +5 for the season in ES scoring, and he does not play against the top players all the time, but has a -10, that is an indicator to me that perhaps the shot quality taken while he is on the ice is weak - OR - the shot quality surrendered is skewed to too often dangerous. That will indicate to me that more research is needed, and that is what analytics is SUPPOSED to do.

Until we have a really reliable indicator of the QUALITY of shots taken and given up that is tied into Corsi, then +/- becomes part of the context needed to give additional insight.

So, agreed that +/- is no panacea, not by any means, but it has meaning after all, as do its two component parts, GF and GA while on the ice at ES.

You can choose never to use it, but I contend that using it as one of many tools gives the analyst MORE information.

I hope this message makes some sense to folks.

 

[BaseballCoach]

I don't think so. The +/- will never really be good because it doesn't account for the quality of the goaltending. The reason shots are used over goals is because it takes away the goaltending aspect of it, at least for possession stats.

I appreciate that, but it actually does not take away GOALTENDING QUALITY. It takes away SAVE PERCENTAGE.

I'm not sure I want to do that EXCLUSIVELY. Why? Because the save percentage is DIRECTLY RELATED to the quality of the shot surrendered (or taken).

So when I see a player with a high GA/60, or a surprisingly bad plus-minus, I want to look further.

As I said in the first post here, to a hypothetical player who is on the ice for lots of goals against,

"Johnny Boy, I don't give a crap about your Corsi, if it's only good because Paul Byron thinks he's doing me a favour by throwing pucks weakly at the net with no chance of going in. What I want to know about is not your Corsi, but my I-see. Why do I see the other team keep getting open in the slot when you are on the ice, and how come you almost never block one of those dangerous shots?"

 

[dcyhabs]

And Gionta probably had a great corsi because he shot the puch from anywhere. Therrien's system probably doesn't help corsi in the defensive zone, but it probably inflates it uselessly on offense.

On the defensive side the opponent has the puck, stuff happens (shot, face off, recovery...), habs chip the puck out, other team takes possession, back on offense more chance for shots. In the offensive zone the habs have the puck, they aren't supposed to mess around moving the puck or trying to generate a real chance, just shoot and hope for a rebound. I would expect the habs corsi to be high but their shooting percentage to be feeble. You could score goals that way in the '80s when goaltending was less of a science but today you need to mix it up a bit.

Conclusion: when Therrien looks bad he's bad and when he looks good he's bad. But let's be harder to play against because it worked so well for those other guys.

 

[BaseballCoach]

And Gionta probably had a great corsi because he shot the puch from anywhere.

Now take it to the next step. Suppose Gionta and Gomez play together all the time, or 95% of the time.

Gionta is busy shooting right at the goalie's chest or 5 feet wide, many times per game. And if it's not Gomez, it's Moen or Pyatt on the left side. Meanwhile Gomez is lazy backchecking and the other team gets slot chances twice per game.

Gomez might end up with a great Corsi, but a poor +/-. Unfortunately, Gionta would get the bad +/- too. That's when you have to look at odd-man rushes and slot shots taken, and also blocked shots and other things.

All stats taken in isolation can be misleading.

 

[PaulD]

No. Analytics is more trivial. Maybe if two players have equal talent. That could be used as a tiebreaker.

A fast moving, bouncing puck is unpredictable at times. All these extra stats don't account for that. Nor do they reflect shot blocking and desire.

If a guy has great possession numbers but is a floater. Not a team oriented person. What good is he?

Exactly.

Nothing beats watching a player perform in big games to get his true value. Watching a player play through an injury. Watching a player play an elimination game. Sacrifice the body to keep a puck alive. Read a play. Adapt with line mates. Put "team" first at all times.

Evaluating two players deemed equal in all of the above, nothing wrong with looking at the analytics on them.

 

[PaulD]

Now take it to the next step. Suppose Gionta and Gomez play together all the time, or 95% of the time.

Gionta is busy shooting right at the goalie's chest or 5 feet wide, many times per game. And if it's not Gomez, it's Moen or Pyatt on the left side. Meanwhile Gomez is lazy backchecking and the other team gets slot chances twice per game.

Gomez might end up with a great Corsi, but a poor +/-. Unfortunately, Gionta would get the bad +/- too. That's when you have to look at odd-man rushes and slot shots taken, and also blocked shots and other things.

All stats taken in isolation can be misleading.

Well said. (had to laugh at the Gionta example) That guy did shoot from anywhere.

 

[PaulD]

In the same team, it does makes sense.

Unless a d-men only plays with Price (and never with Condon for example).
Overall it does reflect some of the performance in the same team.

Now from one team to another, you need shots.

But even in the same team, shots will not give you the whole picture.
Quality of opposition needs to be factored in.
Pretty sure Weber and Josi had better opposition than Elllis and Ekholm.

All good points.

But the best plus minus numbers in one season belongs to Bobby Orr.

and the best over all plus minus for a career belongs to Larry Robinson.

Telling stat.

 

[CGG]

How do you fell about +/- ? It's not an advanced stat, but it is a stat.

As others have said, to compare players on the same team, with proper context, it tells you something. My only real beef with +/- is that it unfairly punishes "offensive" players and rewards defensive players. When you're on the ice on a PP no matter what you do you can't get a plus. But you can get a minus. Same and vice versa for penalty killers - you can get a plus, but never a minus. Empty net goals also skew things - pulling your goalie results in a goal against far more often than a goal scored, so if you're on the ice trying to tie up a game, you will far more likely end up with a minus instead of a plus.

 

[Dominator13]

How do you fell about +/- ? It's not an advanced stat, but it is a stat.

It's the most useless stat in hockey. Players don't control puck's they go in, there's a goalie for that.

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

It's not a meaningless stat.

Yeah, it pretty much is and we've got much better numbers out there at our disposal. Use it if you wish but I put zero stock in it.

Now take it to the next step. Suppose Gionta and Gomez play together all the time, or 95% of the time.

Gionta is busy shooting right at the goalie's chest or 5 feet wide, many times per game. And if it's not Gomez, it's Moen or Pyatt on the left side. Meanwhile Gomez is lazy backchecking and the other team gets slot chances twice per game.

Gomez might end up with a great Corsi, but a poor +/-. Unfortunately, Gionta would get the bad +/- too. That's when you have to look at odd-man rushes and slot shots taken, and also blocked shots and other things.

All stats taken in isolation can be misleading.

Look at Desharnais and Max as the example I showed you before. DD has played with Max for 2/3rds his icetime in the past four years. So if you look at his Corsi alone it comes out to 52. But with Max it goes up a bit and without him it drops through the cellar.

We don't just have to look at one number man, we can look at several. Why would we look at plus minus where it rewards players for things they had nothing to do with? If for example you're playing against better players and you've got bad goaltending, your numbers are going to suck. That's not the case with possession numbers. In that case you're able to see how the player stacked up play wise against the opposition.

And btw, it's been shown that shooting from everywhere isn't going to help your Corsi numbers. All that happens in that case is you lose possession of the puck and the opposition comes right back into your zone.

 

[CDN24]

Yeah, it pretty much is and we've got much better numbers out there at our disposal. Use it if you wish but I put zero stock in it.


Look at Desharnais and Max as the example I showed you before. DD has played with Max for 2/3rds his icetime in the past four years. So if you look at his Corsi alone it comes out to 52. But with Max it goes up a bit and without him it drops through the cellar.

We don't just have to look at one number man, we can look at several. Why would we look at plus minus where it rewards players for things they had nothing to do with? If for example you're playing against better players and you've got bad goaltending, your numbers are going to suck. That's not the case with possession numbers. In that case you're able to see how the player stacked up play wise against the opposition.

And btw, it's been shown that shooting from everywhere isn't going to help your Corsi numbers. All that happens in that case is you lose possession of the puck and the opposition comes right back into your zone.

I agree that +/- has its limitations but I would not go so far as to say it is totally useless. Like most other stats it tells you what happened it does not tell you why.

I am always amazed that the biggest supporters of shot based possession metrics are usually the biggest critics of +/- when every +/- event is a corsi/fenwick event and most of the criticisms of +/- apply equally to shot based possession metrics. A player will get a + or a - on a play he had nothing to do with, he will also get CF and CA events on plays he had nothing to do with.

The only valid argument against +/- not equally applicable is the crappy goaltender argument. Maybe a crappy goalie helps you CA as he cuts down on rebound chances by letting in the first shot. Seriously +/- will do a better job of capturing shot quality than a count of shot attempts. Personally I like GA60 and GF60 stats which are essentially +/- stats accounting for ice time as all +/- are not created equal. Two guys can both be a -5 on the season but time on ice is an important consideration.

With any stat we need to know their usage for context a 3rd liner with marginally better stats than a 1st liner is not a better player, he just did a better job playing against other third liners than the 1st liner did against top level competition. Flip their roles and the 3rd liner will struggle against first line opposition while the other guy will thrive against lesser competition.

With respect to the bolded and with all due respect to Gretzky's famous quote shooting from anywhere is more likely to improve your Corsi as you are creating a Corsi event. Every shot attempt gives up possession and one of two things happens, either other team gets possession and goes the other getting a shot attempt or you regain possession and get another attempt. In the first case you are a net zero (1 for offset by the one against) In the second case there is a positive benefit. That shot attempt at worse is breakeven from a Corsi perspective. Even if the other team gains possession, like plus minus you may be off the ice by the time the CA occurs in the other end. Shot attempts are a proxy for possession. They may correlate highly with possession but they do not measure possession. That shooting from anywhere will not improve possession but over multiple events it will improve shot attempt stats.

 

[Price is Wright]

All good points.

But the best plus minus numbers in one season belongs to Bobby Orr.

and the best over all plus minus for a career belongs to Larry Robinson.

Telling stat.

Brad McCrimmon has a better career plus minus than Mike Bossy.

Dallas Smith has a better +/- than Chris Chelios.

Bill Hajt has a better +/- than Jaromir Jagr.

Jim Watson has a better +/- than Yvon Cournoyer.

 

[Hoople]

It's not a meaningless stat. The fair thing to say is it must be understood in context. The most important context is the team you are playing on. You cannot easily compare a player on one team with a player on another. Quality of Teammate and Opponents are also important.

The objection you raise with regard to just coming on the ice or off the ice is EXACTLY Applicable to shot metrics as well. The shot taken against your team when you just arrived on the ice is recorded against you, whether it went in the net or not.

Having said all that, as a coach or fan, I want to know a player's +/- on MY team. I have a good idea of how the player is used. Manny Malhotra was not going to be a plus player the way he was used in Montreal. So his -6 in 58 games of 10 minutes each was not terrible, in my opinion.

When you look at the two components of +/-, which are GF and GA, ironically these are used in advanced stats a lot. They just like to divide by 60 minutes, and I get that. Once again, QOT and QOO would be extremely relevant.

Goaltending is an issue, but IMPORTANTLY, the quality of goaltender has been shown to be FAR LESS of an influence on save percentage than the quality of scoring chance.

Carey Price has a worse average on dangerous slot shots than Ben Scrivens does on long easy shots.

A forward who is lazy backchecking and permits lots of 3-on-2s against his team might have a decent Corsi if he does this twice a game, resulting in one dangerous shot, while being on the ice for 1-2 extra harmless shots at the other end (say a shoot-in done by putting it on net from the red line). However, the chance of a goal against is much higher when surrendering odd-man rushes than the chance of getting a goal on a long shoot-in. So I'm interested in knowing the overall result of my player's activities in terms of goals.

If he has a Corsi of 51% on a team that is +5 for the season in ES scoring, and he does not play against the top players all the time, but has a -10, that is an indicator to me that perhaps the shot quality taken while he is on the ice is weak - OR - the shot quality surrendered is skewed to too often dangerous. That will indicate to me that more research is needed, and that is what analytics is SUPPOSED to do.

Until we have a really reliable indicator of the QUALITY of shots taken and given up that is tied into Corsi, then +/- becomes part of the context needed to give additional insight.

So, agreed that +/- is no panacea, not by any means, but it has meaning after all, as do its two component parts, GF and GA while on the ice at ES.

You can choose never to use it, but I contend that using it as one of many tools gives the analyst MORE information.

I hope this message makes some sense to folks.

Your post makes a lot of sense.

There is a reason you can find stats online for Corsi, Fenwick, +/-, GF/60, GA/60 etc. is because all of those stats show what happened in the past. It doesn't show the WHY.

The WHY is what teams pay the big dollars for. Against a D Pairing, which one are you going to target on the zone entry. Do you chip or skate it in against that pairing. If you chip, which D side will you target. If you forecheck harder against a D, what are the outcomes. Tendencies and outcomes for each opposing player on the other team. Those are the relevant stats. Those are the advanced analytics that matter.

The same in baseball. You can find all kinds of stats for pitchers, batters and fielders. You cannot find the stats regarding situational outcomes and tendencies that each team compiles.

Corsi, Fenwick and the other stats available to fans are nothing more than fodder for fans to argue which player or team they believe is better in their opinion. That's it.

 

[Price is Wright]

Corsi, Fenwick and the other stats available to fans are nothing more than fodder for fans to argue which player or team they believe is better in their opinion. That's it.

So every team in the league is hiring analytics experts to argue on the Internet. Gotcha.

 

[Hoople]

So every team in the league is hiring analytics experts to argue on the Internet. Gotcha.

Nice. Maybe you should have read and understood the paragraphs above that one.

So I'll just ask you this question and see if you can give me the answer.

When Tampa plays Montreal, what % of the time did they target Markov on the zone entries?

 

[Lshap]

I am always amazed that the biggest supporters of shot based possession metrics are usually the biggest critics of +/- when every +/- event is a corsi/fenwick event and most of the criticisms of +/- apply equally to shot based possession metrics. A player will get a + or a - on a play he had nothing to do with, he will also get CF and CA events on plays he had nothing to do with.

I think of +/- as proto-analytics, the bedrock on which the more refined stats were eventually built. It wasn't useless when it first came out because, in its time, it did what no other number did: Isolate team success or failure based on who was on the ice. Where it failed was in treating all 10 skaters on the ice the same.

+/- is probably not useless, anymore than a horse & buggy. Both will get you to your destination, but you'll have to wait a lot longer. I suppose with enough data compiled over enough seasons +/- will approximate event-based analytics, but why not take the faster vehicle in the first place?

That said, I agree with you that Corsi/Fenwick does a good job of describing what's actually happened, but can't tell you why. They can also be artificially inflated or diminished.

 

[BaseballCoach]

I think of +/- as proto-analytics, the bedrock on which the more refined stats were eventually built. It wasn't useless when it first came out because, in its time, it did what no other number did: Isolate team success or failure based on who was on the ice. Where it failed was in treating all 10 skaters on the ice the same.

+/- is probably not useless, anymore than a horse & buggy. Both will get you to your destination, but you'll have to wait a lot longer. I suppose with enough data compiled over enough seasons +/- will approximate event-based analytics, but why not take the faster vehicle in the first place?

That said, I agree with you that Corsi/Fenwick does a good job of describing what's actually happened, but can't tell you why. They can also be artificially inflated or diminished.

You have a point in general, but....when it comes to high danger scoring chances, +/- (or ES GF and GA) is the supersonic jet, and Corsi is the horse and buggy.

Not all shots are equal. Most goals come off high danger scoring chances.

 

[Lebowski]

It's an additional tool. Something that validates the eye test more often than not.