The Back Check podcast relies on a bunch of non-traditional hockey stats to try to assess players’ careers and to try to compare players between eras. This is an index page for those stats, which are explained in more detail on the pages linked to from this one. We rely on the indispensable hockey-reference.com for most of them.
Adjusted Goals/Assists/Points
This is an era adjustment created by hockey-reference. It starts from the premise that scoring changes year to year, and adjusts every NHL year to what they consider average. We discuss the method and its flaws on this page.
Dominance Quotient
This is something we tried to come up with, a means of evaluating how much a player outscored his teammates over his career. We don’t have a grounding in statistics, so it’s very flawed and not very good. We are not currently relying on it for the podcast because of how dubious it is.
Point Shares
This is another hockey-renference stat. It is their attempt at Win Shares for hockey.
(We are aware that there are better approximates of Win Shares for hockey in existence, bu
Quality Player
This is a term we use to assess a player’s career longevity versus their value. It’s super simplistic and not adjusted for era, as yet. This is all it is:
- Forwards: at least .5 PPG in a given season, playing in at least 50% of the games in that season
- Defence: at least 2 DPS (see above) in an 82-game season; we need to pro rate it for earlier seasons
- Goalies: We go by starter versus backup for goalies:
- Starter: started at least 50%+1 games for a team in a given season
- 1A: started somewhere between 40% and 50% of the games in a given season
- Backup: started less than 40% of the games in a given season