NHL advanced stats glossary
Advanced stats are here to stay. They are the fabric of high-level analysis across all sports and that includes the NHL, where the analytics movement has been gaining steam for a long time now.
Our 2023-24 NHL Betting Guide will include a lot of stats and abbreviations that you may not be all that familiar with, but they are stats that you will want to keep in mind as you read and as you bet on games throughout the season.
To illustrate why these stats are important, let’s use shots on goal as an example. A shot on goal is any puck shot towards the net that would go in if there was not a goalie standing there. Not all shots are created equal, though. A dump-in on net from the red line is not nearly the same as a rebound chance right in front of the goal. A cross-crease one-timer is not the same as a puck flipped on net by a forward during a 1-on-2 rush so that his team can get a whistle and a stoppage of play do not have the same chance of becoming a goal.
Some of the stats incorporated by Jonny Lazarus in the team previews are examples of why higher-level analysis is needed to quantify the quality of shots on goal.