should be called Pluses and Minuses of NHL's +/- Stat

I was today years old when I found out that plus/minus doesn't include power play points...

Like the joke at the beginning of the video …” where is everybody going? … 😂😂

+/- without context is meaningless. But in context it can say a bunch.

Here's a random thing I recently looked at, Wayne Gretzky was a -80 in his last six seasons 😮

+/- would unfairly destroy stats for penalty killers if powerplays counted.

+/- is mostly a team stat, but you can still draw some decent conclusions if you compare teams in similar situations. Ex: Forsling this year was +10 better than the next player in the NHL, and +23 on the next guy on the team. So we can infer that Forsling had a great defensive season even beyond the team's great performance, especially when you consider his normal partner in Ekblad missed more than 30 games, and Gus still led in +/-. But no +/- is not an end all, be all, then again no stat should be an end all, be all. If you want to use +/- as a factor in determining a player's season it should at best a secondary or tertiary factor, not the primary. Basically, numbers can be misleading, just watch the guys play.

I'm one of Erik Karlsson's biggest fans, and +/- is a stat that doesn't do him any favours. Over his career he has been on the ice for 63 empty net goals for and 115 empty net goals against, so - 52. This really killed him on the Sharks - last season he was - 26 but actually - 10, and in 21-22 he was - 14 but actually even. Earlier in his career it wasn't as bad (in 10-11 he was - 30 but only - 3 in EN) but coaches pull goalies earlier now than they did in the early 2010s. In EK's career with SJ he was - 67 but without EN - 19 - that's how drastic the numbers can be for a guy with his deployment on bad teams. Also, he's the top PP guy on his teams but doesn't kill penalties, or rarely does, so he has been on for 72 PP goals against but only 20 shorthanded goals for, so - 52. (He's - 99 for career, those EN and special teams numbers are - 104). Compare that to his favourite partner in Ottawa, Methot, who had 1 PPGA and 18 SHGF, or +17. And though I don't know the specific numbers, his EN +/- was aided by the fact that he defended leads and was on for many empty net goals for. A lot of shutdown D-men types have good +/- because they aren't on for ENGA, on for many ENGF, and win the special teams +/- battle. Marcus Pettersson is a great example. And then there's also the little things that bother me about it. The past two years EK has had like seven assists at ES where he wasn't credited with the plus because he got off the ice just before the goal was scored. Or sometimes he isn't even off the ice yet but the player replacing him jumps on in that "buffer zone" and they get the plus instead. It's a very flawed stat, best to be used with all this context in mind, especially if looking over a career.

5:53 “he plays for Chicago Blackhawks”

I LOVE the Solar Bears jersey!!! I didn't know you owned that one :D

Amother great video your the only person i heard talk about this and Thank you for that .

Love the Solar Bears jersey! Thanks for explaining this!

The Blackhawks players are highlighted in this video, so to should Alex Vlasic who played 76 games and was -4. I watched many Hawks games this year and unlike his teammates, Vlasic was strong along the boards and very reliable with the puck. It was noticeable and backed up in +/- compared to his peers. It is worth pointing this out, and I think his new contract is possibly the most team friendly in the NHL.

I've always kind of hated the +/-. It often tells more about the team than the players themselves and it gets more skewed the more playtime the player has.

Great video Shannon! And especially talking about the Norris race. The numbers don't lie when it comes to defensive ability. Also love the jersey! i recently just bought the Avalanche colorado retro makar jersey XD My collection is slowly growing lol

I've never clicked on a THG video this fast. I love all your content, but the "boring" hockey talk is fascinating. Your research and in-depth analysis is such a refreshing change from the clickbaity content that most hockey accounts put out. Thanks!

Very informative! Thank you.

"I'm gonna talk about plus/minus stats.... Where's every is going"? Funny. Dad joke stuff for sure. Love your content THG. Love from Finland P.s I see no Leaf's guys in either plus or minus side.??? One would think Toronto's defense would be high in minus stats.

I love this stat I know it’s not everything but it can definitely change how I feel about a player

IIRC, Larry Robinson has a career +/- of around + 612. A statistic that still blows my mind.

great dive brother

I think maybe a better stat would be “plus minus relative to team average”. Usually the best teams will be mostly full of + players with a couple minuses who stand out. And vice versa for bad teams.

I can't believe I caught this right away. I also totally love this discussion!

Love the Solar Bears sweater. Been in FL for 23 years. Been to a few games.

As a defense man i can say you said the most important thing that its a stat you can use on a nightly basis to see if a player is on the ice for point production or defending points form being scored. I absolutely agree with you that the +/- stat should be used on not only PP but on PK as well

I remember back in 17-18, when OEL was still an elite d-man, he had sth like -31, and analyst said that thing takes nothing away from him because he was the only great d-man on that coyote team so whenever they were scored on, he was on the ice all the time.

Loving the Solar Bears rep

Would love to see a comparison of the top +/- over the years and see where they ended up in the Norris race.

Having PP goals count in +/- would make the stat even more useless, since then you wouldn’t be able to fairly compare team members with each other in this regard as not every player gets powerplay time (on which it’s way easier to score and not get scored on).

18:38 described what happen to Calen Addison in Minnesota.

I think the stat is good for direct comparisons. Looks at the top 5 teams in GAA, goal diff, or scoring. Then look at the +/- of those top respective teams area (D men for top gaa teams, forwards for top scoring, etc) and i think you can clearly see who the top performers are in those areas.

Makar deserves to win it again! Go Avs Go

Love the solar bears sweater

Solar Bears! That jersey is fantastic, I only have the white one.

Great opening! I had to stay for the whole video just because of that. I loved your Bedard analysis. Perfect.

I agree. I think Makar has shown more defensive capabilities in his stat line than Hughes i.e. penalties taken/drawn and giveaways/takeaways. I guess we will see what happens, but I am guessing they are going to give it to Hughes, because of his point TOTAL and +/-.

Couldn’t agree more on plus/minus and the pplay..

Bedard 18 and starting at first line center wing to put up them points is AMAZING all on its own!

Im 1000% in agreement with you about powerplay counting for +/-. Preach!

I've always liked +/-. No, it's not an all-encompassing stat that determines how good a player is at defense, but it's actually fairly handy to compare it in the aggregate across a whole team over time, or a player over their whole career. The key is that you have to know the context of the team a player played on, or an era a team played in. But within that context, it can be useful.

Orr and Robinson should be up there as footnotes.

I once saw a suggestion that plus minus could be fractions. And it should be equal to how many skaters you opponents have on ice divided by how many skaters your side has on ice (I’m not sure how the extra skater would work.) If you score on a 5-on-4 PP, you get a +0.8. If you score 4 on 5 shorthanded, you get 1.25.

Powerplay points are a factor, although it doesn't change the picture amongst Norris finalists this year. All 3 of them are close with Josi 33 PPP, Hughes 38 PPP and Makar 39 PPP.

I like the stat in small sample sizes, like loss/win streaks or playoff series, but I think that it’s more a stat about the coach’s decisions rather than the player’s performance.

Close to -20 of Bedard's -44 was 6 on 5 empty netters.

You should get press passes and get to vote. How do we make that happen?

The players know who is the best at their position. Only they should vote.

Including PP in plus-minus stats would skew the plus side toward the few players who play on the PP special team. Think about it... teams put their best players out on the PP and that's when goals are more likely to happen. Third and fourth line forwards get shafted.

Im a new hockey fan and to me +/- feels kind of similar to pitcher wins in baseball.

As an even further rabbit hole does +/- count goals scored on delayed penalties

Imagine what Sakic's career plus minus would be if you counted all his points on the PP!

Should power play shots be counted seperately from even strengthed shots?

Let the #THG4AwardsVoter campaign commence.

Where’s everybody going? Went to the store and I’m back with snacks to enjoy the video :>

I think is great for like a 5-7 game stretch

Are these the small magnets that THG been talking about that he has hundreds of lol

Who was the guy behind the bench when the goal was scored?

It's a good stat, shows which defensemen are on the ice when the opponent scores. Plenty of minuses = bad defending.

Maybe they can do a +/- | - It would show how far above/below specific players are in comparison to their teammates collective average +/-

So based on all of your knowledge and observation, who do you think deserves the Norris this year?

Jason Dickinson was +4 for Chicago while playing every game during the regular season and having the 5th most time on excluding goalies so what does that say about him?

I love plus/minus. After “advanced” stats became a thing, I thought of p/m as the original advanced stat. As with any data point, it should not be used exclusively, but rather as part of a whole to give the number context.

the plus minus of plus minus?

I think the +/- is a decent measure for a players performance for a single game but doesn’t say much beyond that.

Second assist is silly sometimes

I finally see a guy at the top on a list from my birthplace, yes! That most mean that +/- is the most important stat! Give that guy norris, hart and art ross thophy and why not vezina too 😉

THG should be able to vote.

OMG a Solar Bears sweater 😢

I always viewed the +\- stat as relative to the whole team. If everybody else on your team has a (-40) then it can’t be expected from somebody like Bedard to have a positive. The +\- stat is only really relevant when one player is highly above or below the average for the rest of the team

why did the preds get rid of ekholm

Its an important complimentary stat

+/- is best used to compare against team mates. For instance, if you are the only plus, or only minus, on a team over a certain stretch, then it can be used to help dig deeper into how a player is performing vis-a-vis their team mates. When used to compare with players on other teams, it begins to fall apart and is pretty useless.

14:13 I can't imagine what game inspired this tangent 😢

If you are take the penalty, you should also get dinged on the plus/ minus. [Probably not for things like bench minors].

It makes so little sense that the stat is applicable for the penalty-kill but not the powerplay. It should really count for both or neither.

plus/minus always seemed like a real “arbitrary” sabermetric stat where it’s supposed to be a catch-all stat, but in reality doesn’t say much of anything, like OPS in baseball. the layman can look at the stat and get the impression that a player is having a great season/series when they haven’t really been playing that well.

There are so many debatable metrics to weigh on this one that it certainly deserves the 22 min breakdown from THG. Sometimes it does matter and other times it’s deceiving is where I leave it 😂

How about if you did something like an adjusted plus/minus (not sure what the appropriate name for this stat would be), where instead of looking at the raw plus/minus of the individual player, you instead look at the difference between their raw plus/minus and the average plus/minus of the rest of their team? Think this could go a long way toward removing the bias in the stat inherent with being on a good or bad team. Regarding the power play, how about a compromise? Count power play goals as a plus for the players on the scoring team, but not as a negative against the players on the negative team.

You can make this argument for every stat. assists.... 1st compared to 2nd. (pass to the playmaker..... 2nd assist) goals...... be on McDavid's line and turn into a 50+ goal scorer. Being on a really strong team will boost your stats, same as being on a weak team. etc. etc.

Forsling +56, Montour +1, same team, top minutes.

I think plus monus is a very good stat. Back in the day, David Backes had at least one season where he had 30 goals, 30 assists, and + 30. If i had 6 players like that on my team, i get the cup every year. I do agree with your logic on the pp and pk. That never made sense.

Ovechkin was a -35 in 2013-14. I remember people saying how awful he was He had 39 power play points that year. Really didnt make sense to me

The NHL needs a good stat to measure defensive performance. +/- is used because the NHL does not make advanced defensive stats more accessible to fans and the media.

Do you think the NHL should have an all-defensive team with 3 forwards and 2 defensemen on first and second teams? Just like the NBA has with all-defensive team and MLB with the gold glove.

One problem with including power plays - some teams use their first unit almost the entire power play.. The Rangers, usually figure they are AT LEAST 1:20, unless they just got off the ice. You get a player who may be +10, say, 5-on-5, and another is +5. If Mr. +10 is on the PP, if you count the PP, he may be +30!! Makes the difference look HUGE. Show you how much PP stats inflate numbers - who was second on the Rangers in 5-on-5 goals this year behind Panarin? Kreider? Trocheck? Zibanejad? No. Lafreniere. 26. Same number Kreider had a couple years ago... when he had 52 overall... but Laffs doesn't get much PP time.

I’ll pitch a wild idea, but what about giving 0.5 +/- point to PP goals, and reward PK players with 0.5 +/- point as well when they kill a penalty? I don’t think you should penalize a team for pk goals. Tho might be tricky to determine who gets those pk +/- lol

Let’s not forget ovie winning the rocket with a leagues 3rd worst -35👀

Best Sweater Ever!

New magnets?

I might piss off the stats needs, but Corsi and Fenwick always felt like fancy +/- to me

Why no Adam fox?

You should differently get negative if you caused your team a penalty that the other team scored on.

+/- can sometimes be misleading. But when it comes to the difference between Luke Hughes and Simon Nemec, it's not.

I suspect the thinking for excluding PP goals when the stat was created was it was unfair to give penalty killers, who are operating at a significant disadvantage, the same minus as for even strength goals. Which led to the idea of not giving minuses or pluses to either side for PP goals. Maybe use - call it a power plus minus - which gives pluses to skaters on the ice for PP goals without giving minuses to the opposing penalty killers? Not sure this would be any more meaningful.

Minnesota Wild fans are punching air so hard. Must’ve been hard for them to read the board through the blur of their tears

Canada

Pavel Datsyuk "won" the NHL's "Best +/- award" a few years in a row, then suddenly the award disappeared.

I believe, plus / minus get credited during 4 on 4 & 3 on 3 situations - also... Correct me, IF I am wrong.

If you are on a really good team and everyone is a plus and you are a -10, something is amiss in your play. And vice versa, if a guy is a +15 on a bad team thats impressive. Its flawed but interesting and fun in my opinion

I think plus minus is an underrated stat that shouldn’t be taken at face value and will always need more context when looking at a players plus minus. There are a lot of factors that can either boost or negatively impact a players plus minus.