Thread by @EvolvingWild

Seeing some discussion about PDO and whatnot today. A reminder: that stat is kind of just made up and doesn’t really mean anything actually.

To clarify: just because a team has a higher PDO doesn’t necessary mean they are getting “lucky”, or we should expect them to “regress”. The opposite is true re: unlucky. If a team has good shooters and good goaltending etc, they may just be a good team with a high PDO.

But, re: the Leafs - is their current performance this season unsustainable? Almost certainly. But I’d say that’s because they have a G+/-60 of 1.19 which only the 18-19 Lightning surpassed. So, yeah, that’s probably not sustainable.

I created the goal +/- components page of EH to dig deeper into a team’s PDO (evolving-hockey.com/stats/team_sta…). The Leafs’ goal differential is driven more by shooting and goaltending, but their rates and quality are decent, so I wouldn’t say they’re going to totally fall off a cliff.

Here is this in visual form... If anything, people should also be talking about how insane T.B’s performance this year is 😳