We’re just far enough into the inaugural PWHL season for all teams to have played more than one game, which I have decided is enough of a sample size to bring my (so far) only calculated hockey statistic to the PWHL: plus-plus (+/+).
+/+ originated as a just-past-midnight idea I had a little over a year ago:
introducing my newest bad metric for hockey players: absolute plus-minus ( |+/-| ). it is straight up plus minus, but +1 whether the goal is for or against their team. the neutral’s stat. i don’t care who wins, i just wanna know that i can expect goals when they’re on the ice
— An Nguyen (@nguyenank_) October 18, 2022
A tweet from Oct 18, 2022 at 12:07 AM reading “introducing my newest bad metric for hockey players: absolute plus-minus ( |+/-| ). it is straight up plus minus, but +1 whether the goal is for or against their team. the neutral’s stat. i don’t care who wins, i just wanna know that i can expect goals when they’re on the ice” with 269 likes.
also: i have decided to call it plus-plus ( +/+) bc it most appropriately mirrors the plus-minus connection and More Importantly makes me laugh everytime i see it
— An Nguyen (@nguyenank_) October 18, 2022
A series of tweets from Oct 18, 2022. The first reads “y’all i sent this tweet after midnight i can’t believe i have to go Do it now” while the second, sent at 2:40PM, reads “also: i have decided to call it plus-plus ( +/+) bc it most appropriately mirrors the plus-minus connection and More Importantly makes me laugh everytime i see it”.
As the series of tweets state, the name of the statistic hints at its calculation. The more established stat plus-minus (+/-) for a player is calculated by adding +1 each time the player’s team scores while the player is on the ice, and adding -1 each time the player’s team is scored against while the player is on the ice. On the other hand, plus-plus adds +1 in both scenarios, regardless of whether the player’s team is scoring or getting scored on.
I position plus-plus as “the neutral’s stat.” It’s for the viewer who tunes into a game and isn’t rooting for a particular team, just wants to see an exciting game. More specifically, its for the viewer who wants to see goals, no matter from which side. If that viewer sees a player with a high +/+ playing, they may dial in to the game given the prior history of goals happening with that player on the ice.
This aim of plus-plus causes it to slightly diverge from plus-minus. Plus-minus doesn’t account for goals scored by the power play, but for plus-plus, well, a goal is a goal.
Also,, while plus-plus is a player statistic, I deliberately describe it in relation to the audience and what they can get out of it. It is absolutely not a good way to evaluate the players themselves. (Neither is plus-minus, incidentally, but that’s an entirely different matter.) It’s supposed to be a silly, light-hearted statistic.
Also, for the sake of comparison, given teams have played a varying number of games, and players may have played a varying number of their team’s games, I also have plus-plus per game played (+/+ per GP) for each player, where a “game played” is any game where they appeared on the roster. Still, raw +/+ is the ultimate metric I’m sorting everything by.
Plus, I joked about this at the top of the article, but even if this is a silly stat, at most four games is an absurdly low sample size, so I need y’all to take this with grains of salt the size of a molehill.
With that all said and done, let’s take a look at the top ten skaters in the +/+ standings so far, and who’s leading the +/+ charge for their team:
