You cannot have *overall* negative impacts and have a high WAR. If your play is hurting your team overall, as you have alleged Skinner does, you will not have a high WAR. You will have a replacement level WAR or even a negative one. A high WAR suggests that a player's positive far outweighs their negatives. If you could be hurting your team and still be far above replacement level, the vast majority of players on every single team would be net negatives hurting their team with every shift, while 3-5 players on each team would do everything positive- offensively and defensively- for every team in every game.
Every player has positives, every player has negatives. So how good are their positives, how bad are their negatives? WAR attempts to combine the two.
I think you're just blinded by your hate of Skinner here.
his defense is horrid, no doubt. His finishing is very good, no doubt.
but again the metric is compared to a replacement level player.
the replacement level player is naturally going to have a lower level defensive level. even then its likely a negative for skinner in comparison.
but his offense and finishing will be much higher than a replacements. Hence the very high WAR number.
very high EV O, finishing and PP numbers >>>>> over a replacement
EV D < replacement
so skinner has a high WAR.
that doesnt mean he is a value add to a team trying to win unless the cap hit low enough to balance out allowing as many goals as scoring when on the ice.
