It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of plus/minus, the back-of-the-napkin calculation usually used to praise or criticize a player’s defense. This season, though, it seems to put a spotlight on some of the Preds’ struggles — just not in the way people usually think.
First, a quick refresher on how plus/minus is calculated by the NHL, because it’s a little more complicated than “goals good, allowing goals bad”:
A player gets a plus when he’s on the ice when his team scores an even-strength or shorthanded goal. He also gets a plus when he’s on the ice while his team scores a goal with their goalie pulled for the extra attacker as long as they’re not also on the power play — that is, he gets a plus if he scores in a six-on-five situation, but not a six-on-four situation. A player does not get a plus when he’s on the ice when his team scores a power-play goal.
A player gets a minus when he’s on the ice when his team gives up an even-strength, shorthanded, or empty-net goal (unless the team has pulled the goalie while serving a penalty to go five-on-five instead of four-on-five). A player does not get a minus when he’s on the ice when his team gives up a goal while trying to kill a penalty.
What this means is that power-play specialists and the best offensive players on struggling teams very often have bad plus/minus scores which don’t actually relate to their worth as a team member.
The obvious example of power-play specialists getting dinged is Alex Ovechkin, whose worst plus/minus was a -35 in the 2013-14 season. That year he also scored a league-leading 24 power-play goals and won the Rocket Richard trophy with 51 goals in all, 23% of his entire team’s output.
For the Preds this season, though, the problem is the goalscoring.
And it’s definitely a problem. Luke Evangelista and Mark Del Gaizo (who’s only played one game) are the only Preds with a plus/minus of zero; the entire rest of the team is in the negatives.
Nashville has barely led at all, and have consistently trailed late. Pulling the goalie for the extra attacker is a high-risk plan — that is, it’s more than twice as likely that a team will allow an empty-net goal than score with their goalie pulled, but goal differential only matters in arcane tiebreaking scenarios, while the chance of a win is the chance of a win.
The Preds have given up a league-leading five empty-net goals. Roman Josi and Filip Forsberg, who lead the team in TOI with the net empty (11:27 and 10:49 respectively), have been on the ice for all five. Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, Ryan O’Reilly, and Gustav Nyquist — almost all of whom have also played upwards of ten minutes with the extra attacker — have been out there for four each.
If the Preds were scoring more at even strength, this would be less of an issue in several ways. Obviously, they’d be trailing less, which would mean that they wouldn’t have to be pulling the goalie. But also, Nashville’s even-strength scoring has been bad, which is sinking everyone they’re relying on for last-ditch offense.
Their seven even-strength goals are second-worst in the league, and their ten total goals are a solid worst. The power play hasn’t been that bad compared to the rest of the league, with three goals clocking in a little below the median and a middle-third rate of converting, but the even-strength scoring (or lack thereof) is destroying them.
Looking at, say, Josi’s -5 on the season and saying “oh, he’s been bad defensively” is missing the point; he’s been generating more chances than he gives up, but he’s also been on the ice for five empty-net goals. The same with Stamkos’s -6 — he’s actually been very good at both ends of the ice, but he’s had horrendously bad puck luck and isn’t a goalie.
The numbers are going to change fast if the Preds can get their scoring act together, and with that they should start to rise in the standings as well.
Statistics from NaturalStatTrick.com.