Just as an aside.
I see our expected goals for at 2.76 and the Flyers at 2.57 for that game.
It's crazy how bad that stat is at showing what actually happens in a game. The Sabres had some decent chances and missed the net. The Flyers had technically low % shots, but when they come off a brain dead turnover they are actually pretty dangerous in reality.
I think xG is a very flawed stat personally because it's insanely subjective. If there was a hard qualification for what counts as a "expected goal" it would be easier for me to swallow.
I also don't discount analytics at all for the record, I just think xG has A LOT of flaws and people use it as the end all be all.
I think xG works as a stat once you understand that it can't capture shooting talent or goal tending variability and that it's a really just a measure of the cumulative shot quality for and against.
Like xG can't capture that it's Tage Thompson shooting the puck in the slot, so that shot should be worth more than when Krebs shoots from the same spot. And sometimes goalies make saves on shots that they really shouldn't have been able to stop and sometimes they let in softies. And sometimes the puck bounces, or is on edge a little when a guy shoots it from 2 feet out towards a wide open cage so it goes wide.
It's much closer to a stat like Corsi or Shots on net, than it is to actually predicting the outcome or score of games.
Look at Money Puck's definition:
The sum of the probabilities of unblocked shot attempts being goals. For example a rebound shot in the slot may be worth 0.5 expected goals, while a shot from the blueline while short handed may be worth 0.01 expected goals.
Like for example last night. The Sabres had xGF of 2.76 vs the flyers 2.57. That tells me that both teams were fairly even in the quality and number of unblocked shot attempts. But the Sabres lost 5-1. Which to me says that UPL let in some absolute stinkers, which I also observed with my eyes. And the Sabres put a lot of their highest xG shots wide of the net last night.
They should really just rename it to "unblocked shot quality".