It’s a fundamental question. It gets at the degree of stochasticity in the NHL.
The theme of this blog is that stochasticity is underestimated by hockey experts.
How much of what happens in cold ice rinks in the NHL is actually random vs. predictable? Well, if we lean toward the random, we undermine the GMs, scouts, and talking heads both at NHL Radio and among the throngs of analytics people. If we lean the other way, we make a case for a deeper dive into more and more arcane data.
Professor on Ice 