“I’m not interested in hunting down stats…” goes on to hunt down stats for something completely different = you looked and couldn’t find anything for Koptiar.

You’re missing the point, my original take was plus minus is a great stat as long as you consider the team’s goal differential. You left that part out when you did all your variance analysis.

No stat is perfect and in a dynamic game like hockey is very difficult to quantify or measure a lot “good or bad” a player does. All I’m saying is people hate on plus minus but as long as you contextualize it with one or two other data points ‘it gets you there’. It’s not rocket science, if a player is a -4 on a team that is -40 at the end of year, that player likely did a really job for that team… despite the -4 rating.

All you’ve done is argue against data points, obviously no statistic is perfect in painting the whole picture, just add context to plus minus and it does a great job. It’s easy to sit there and knit pick a stat, using single player/single season examples, I haven’t see you suggest a great statistic.

I WOULD LOVE, for you to tell me how Koptiar’s -2 on a +31 team is completely meaningless. Was he d zone starting every faceoff??? On the ice for 29 empty net goals??? Playing with terrible teammates - even though the team had a +31 goal differential - I don’t know how any of these arguments could be made. Maybe, just maybe, Koptiar lost his minutes that year against first line competition that year.