Most useless or inaccurate stat in hockey?

[BNHL]

Hard to measure, but it does mean you have the puck more often than not...

Faceoffs in either zone are important, but neutral zone faceoffs are less meaningful...

I saw an NHL statistician sitting down with Brian Burke,Mike Milbury,Tony Amonte and Peter Chiarelli and say that less than 2% of faceoffs have direct relationship to goals.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

I saw an NHL statistician sitting down with Brian Burke,Mike Milbury,Tony Amonte and Peter Chiarelli and say that less than 2% of faceoffs have direct relationship to goals.

I guess it would depend upon what is meant by "direct relationship to goals".

 

[RandV]

There really isn't any stats I'll outright complain about but the least for me are ones that end up being total crapshoots in hockey pools, especially head to head. Like a lot of people pick out +/-, but if you draft carefully it's a stat you can intentionally win at. Also while it often gets misused it does have it's value within a certain context, especially when you have a line that consistently plays together (ex: look at Carolina's team player stats for last season). So anyways my main culprits are usually GWG, SO, and to a lesser extent SHP.

GWG is pretty obvious, it's almost completely random and more often than not entirely meaningless in the context of a game. I mean if the game is tied 2-2 and Stamkos scores a clutch goal with a few minutes left in the third, that's noteworthy. But if TBay is winning 6-1 and the other team scores 2 late goals in the third, the fact that Salo happened to score the 4th goal earlier is completely meaningless. If anything this stat would have more meaning if a number of key goals from a few very specific scenario's were all compiled into a single 'Clutch Goal' stat.

For Shootouts? It's again pretty random, and while a noteworthy accomplishment for a goalie is it really much different than a skater scoring a hat trick? If Stamkos and Ovechkin both score 60 goals on a season, you wouldn't award Ovy the Hart because he scored 8 hattricks and Stamkos only had 3. Yet for goaltenders with roughly equal starts, wins, GAA and SV%, SO's can stand out as a factor.

And of course like GWG they're almost impossible to predict in a hockey pool

 

[SpeedDemon]

my main one is shooting percentage. Can be the most misleading

Superstars generally take more shots than grinders but don't score that much more in comparison. Someone who scores 35+ on 250 shots shouldn't shouldn't really be considered less accurate than a player who scores 16 on 64 shots.

 

[sr edler]

Personally I'm a bit in love with the shooting percentage. It only misleads fools. Who cares if Tom Sestito has a 50 percent shooting percentage on six shots when everyone knows it's because of a limited sample size? On a hot streak anyone can have 50 per cent or more on six shots.

Also everyone should know the shooting percentage were bound to be higher in the 80s and early 90s because the game was more open and it was easier to score goals.