it's probably an offshoot of that shot-based prediction crap (Fenwick/CORSI) that has been so popular in this era. Miller, Heinen, Forbort....the Bruins are good at having "lucky" players keep their "regression to their true means" at bay for the extended peak heights of their careers. let other teams think it's fake. they have the right to be wrong.
Rico is subtweeting me, as he is wont to do. But since you asked...
We're talking about PDO - I didn't invent it. It's included in any analytics site, including Natural Stat Trick. Pretty basic stuff, and pretty well vetted over the years. It has absolutely zero to do with Fenwick/Corsi.
PDO definition
PDO (SPSV% aka On-ice S%+Sv%) is the sum of shooting percent (S%) and save percent (Sv%) during even strength play. Often times, but not in our dataset, it is multiplied by 10 for the sake of using whole numbers.
PDO = S% + Sv%, where
S% = goal / shots on goal and Sv% = saves / shots on goal
For an individual player, PDO measures what happens when a given player is on the ice. For a team, PDO measures the total game counts.
What does PDO really measure?
A high PDO for team means a high proportion of shots for are going in, and/or a small fraction of shots against are going in. Therefore, the higher the PDO the better.
However, when talking about PDO, we often talk about
regression to mean, meaning over time, a high PDO will fall to the mean (100), and a low PDO will rise to the mean. The reason the mean is 100 is because a shot on goal is either a goal or a save. Therefore, a total game’s S% and Sv% will always add up to 100. Likewise, summing over the entire season will always add up to 100.
And here's two graphs that shows the regression to the mean: