Polemic®

This Google Spreadsheet looks at some of the stats (I haven’t figured out how to make it hot-sortable there yet) of the top teams in the NHL. I think it’s interesting to subtract power play goals and power play goals against from the teams overall stats to see how the teams are doing 5 on 5.

This shows contrary to the CW, that NJ leans heavily on its special teams (both of them!) and that Buffalo and Anaheim do not.

I’m looking at this number in part of my quest to develop or develop in part, the sabermetrics of hockey. So far, I believe team goal differential is the beginning of that.