oh, wow. "plus/minus is trash unless it confirms my biases?" gotcha. color me glad that staff at our favorite team has not seemed to feel the same way over the past decade or so.
its a lot like the stat for game winning goals.
if you actually pay attention... there are a few very strong players who score a lot of big time goals. they will do it this year. they did it last year. they did it the year before. for a few players... game winning goals is a stat that has significance. there are some players worthy of being considered 'big moment players' who will see the moment and elevate their game
and then... theres always someone that managed to scored the 4th goal in a 7-3 win when the score was 4-0 and got credit for a game winning goal. and maybe dumb luck saw them do it a couple times in this season. and maybe they ended up near the top of the game winning goal list for this year... but they never were known for big goals before. they aren't special. dumb luck was what created their stat
so now you might have to offer a contract to this dumb luck player... do you pay him extra for leading the league in game winning goals last year???
you honestly have to watch the game with your eyes before some of these stats end up meaning a damn thing. even the most useless stat might mean something if you understand the context. but even the best stat in the world is pretty much straight up garbage if you ignore the context.
plus/minus happens to be one that has almost zero value unless you are using it to confirm what you already know. by itself it tells you almost next to nothing but as a research tool I have found it useful over the last 40 years ive been a fan of the game