Regarding players' point scoring in Hockey

[Sunny Mehta]

Don't get too bent out of shape [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img], most traditional hockey stats aren't terribly meaningful for judging true performance anyway. Wrt points - while a different weight for goals and assists would perhaps be better, it still wouldn't nearly tell the whole story.

For example, Jaromir Jagr had 30 goals and 66 assists for 96 points last season, while Zack Parise had 31 goals and 31 assists for 62 points. Even if we weighted the goals and assists differently, Jagr would have more points. However, that doesn't necessarily mean Jagr was a better offensive player than Parise. What those numbers fail to take into account is OPPORTUNITY (and quality of opportunity). Jagr played ~350 more minutes than Parise, including 220 more PP minutes. The goal environment - and therefore a player's goal "expectation" - is very different during PP time compared to ES. In other words, Jagr should've scored more, relative to his opportunity.

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