Quote:Originally posted by ArGarBarGar@Aug 25 2016, 11:50 AM
I probably will never truly understand what this is supposed to show (I get the whole above replacement thing, but some of the numbers seem to not reflect actual production from certain players and just assuming they will do better with better linemates/icetime), but I do love me some numbers.

Part of it is that, generally speaking, it weights goals much higher than assists (the actual values are listed toward the bottom - it varies slightly for each team) because a goal obviously more directly affects the team's differential. It also weighs +/- (again compared to the team's differential) a little more heavily for defensemen, since the assumption is that their primary purpose is defensive play, not points production.

So, in the case of the Chiefs, it weighs Palat being +13 above Garbanzo as being more significant than Garbanzo's 19 more assists. It also weighs Palat's 12 goals more heavily, since he had ~250 fewer minutes played.

As for McDoodle, he had the second-fewest goals on the team and, as said above, those are considered more important than assists. This "underperformance" is made even worse by the huge number of minutes he played.

No, the system isn't perfect, and it certainly values stats in ways that others may not agree with, but it's an interesting take on seeing how a player performs while attempting to normalize for variation in ice time and for overall team performance.