Because it’s an interesting stat? Not sure why you think it correlates to defensive play. Do you also think Brannstrom was just as good defensively as Zub last year while being better than Chabot?
It's one metric that is used as an indicator of a players performance in their own end, of course there are all kind of reasons for these things & other factors come into play but don't pretend it's not used when it clearly is or they wouldn't have it as a stat.
How do you project Brannstrom longterm? I definitely don't think he's as bad as some say, I just don't really know what type of player he will be. I've really been disappointed with him on the PP this year and that's thrown things into question for me. Not entirely his fault, but I had higher hopes on that front. Other than that he's been about as expected... some warts but also does some things well that few other guys on our team do adequately
So Brann was better than Chabot defensively last season while being as good as Zub. Good to know.
It's more than an interesting stat it's an indicator of a player's performance in their own end, but of course it's only one indicator & many other factors go into it like time on ice, d-zone starts, who they are defending against etc... However, when a players pus/minus is quite high like Stutzle at a -22 & Brannstrom at -14 you have to look at why & IMO it's quite clear why. Zaitsev gets a lot more D-zone starts than Brannstrom does, as does J. Brown & Holden because they are all better defensively. Brannstrom is better than all three at skating the puck out of his own end once he gets that opportunity, but when the other team has the puck he is a liability. When Chabot is healthy Brann is a 3rd pairing D & when Sanderson gets here he will be behind him as well. Mete has the exact same problem although Brann is slightly better than Mete getting the puck out.
It can be used within teams to compare, plus along with other stats, but I agree across different teams isn’t much use.
Okay that second PP is an absolute disaster. Sanford ennis tierney like cmon now. No one is transforming whatever the f*** that is.
J brown also gets overpowers by big nhl forwards. We are among the worst teams in the nhl we all get overpowered by the big good nhl towards.
I think NHL knows if they get rid of +/- there will be a new freedom convoy protesting at NHL HQ
Are they using it to determine defensive ability? News to me.
I’m not even sure brannstrom gets dominated any more by big forwards than any other third pairing d man. Big forwards are used for a reason. They’re effective. Not just against smaller d men. He seems to usually be totally fine.
I have trouble thinking of a worse stat.
+/- is sort of interesting when it’s massive numbers. Like yeah if an entire team is -30 and one guy is +15 yeah I’m intrigued by that. But to be like “yo this guy is -8 and this other guy is -11 what does that tell you?!?!” Tells me nothing
Are they? Being subjective doesn't intrinsically make something worse than not subjective, in fact, subjectivity often improves evaluation. Certainly there's less consistency when you add subjectivity, but I disagree with you that hits for example is worse than plus minus. Hits, describes what it intends to describe quite well, there's not a lot of ambiguity what it means. It's clear looking at the hits stats on a given team who throws more hits, look at Ottawa and you can tell who's throwing hits. it's not clear what Chris Phillip's plus minus compared to Karlssoms in 10-11 meant, or Priessing's +42 vs Redden's +1 in 06-07.
