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*domffl* · 03-16-2023, 12:51 AM

Hello there! My name is Dom and I know nothing about hockey. Let's get started.

In this episode of "What the heck is Dom even talking about," I will be demonstrating my extensive knowledge of hockey abbreviations. But here's the catch--I know absolutely nothing. Including about hockey. So this should be fun. I am also trying to extend my bank a little bit and I am partially buzzed from a nice Buffalo Trace bourbon, so I felt like this was the perfect night to do this. So, without further ado, enjoy.

"G"
This one is pretty simple. The G has to stand for "goals." A goal is when an ice skater pushes a cylinder past a heavily-padded man into a woven fabric that is framed by metal. Usually a buzzer sounds deafeningly loud and all the little virtual players form a little triangle-circle thing on the stream. I honestly don't know what else the G could stand for, so I'm 10/10 confident that it stands for goals.

"A"
I have played enough sports in my day to know that a good A means ASSists. (wink). An assist is when an ice skater pushes the cylinder to a teammate who then pushes that cylinder past the padded man into the woven fabric without having to stop his momentum. One thing that I have always been curious about in all sports is how a stat sheet determines whether an assist was an assist or not. Is it a time thing? If I passed it to someone who then took 5 seconds to get down the ice and score a goal, would it count as an assist? Or is it more of a momentum thing where if the player who received the pass had to stop and re-work his momentum then it discounts the assist. I was also always curious as to why some sports only counted one person as receiving an assist (the last pass) and others allowed for two players to receive an assist. I am 80% sure that hockey is one of those sports that allows more than one player to receive an assist on a play. But I have acquired all of my hockey knowledge from approximately 10 hours of playtime on NHL08 when I was in middle school. So I can't really say for sure. But I am 10/10 confident that A stands for assists.

"PTS"
Alright, here is where it starts to get a little fuzzy. I believe I even asked my SMJHL team when "points" was referring to, but I have almost completely forgotten (sorry @Ruggsy). What I do know is that my player had very little of them, so they must be a sign of excellence. I believe that the term "points" refers to how many goals were scored while you were on the ice? Maybe? It can't mean how many points a player scores because every goal is worth 1...right? Is there a 3-point line in hockey? If not, then should there be? I'd love to see some full court bangers that make it in the net. So I'm going with goals that are scored while a certain player is on the ice. 8/10 confidence in that one.

"+/-"
This one I understand (I think) because of basketball. The plus and minus stat is basically a player's goal differential. So it takes your points stat but subtracts how many goals were scored on your team while you were on the ice. It matters for your efficiency sake. If I score 100 goals, it doesn't matter if I allow 150 goals while I'm on the ice. It is essentially a way to see how well-rounded a player is to their team. They have to be able to make goals happen and stop goals from being conceded all at the same time. This is another stat that James Ward-Prowse was not very good at, so sorry Winny Lights, but you might have drafted the wrong fella. 10/10 confidence on this one.

"PIM"
I am completely lost here. I want to say penalties? But how often does a hockey game really come down to penalties anyways? A penalty is when a player starts at half-court (half-ice?) and skates all by himself down the ice to try to beat a goalie. So maybe it means Penalty Infractions Made? I'm honestly not sure what exactly constitutes a penalty in this sport. I mean, the referees just stand and watch as two likely-Russian men pound each other's faces for a little while until they feel like blowing their whistle. And I am approximately 75% sure that doesn't result in a penalty. Maybe it's just in tiebreakers. I am 3/10 confident on this one. I know P means penalty but I can not make the other letters work.

"EV"
I swear on my life, I have no earthly idea what this means. Estimated Value? Expected Vector? I literally can't even make a guess that seems remotely close to what this might be. But if I have to go with something, I chose to believe EV stands for Estimated Value. And if that is correct, then I believe that this is calculated as some sort of efficiency score that is somehow different than the plus minus thing. Maybe it uses hits, too? I can't even begin to guess. Confidence at a 1/10.

"PP"
Uhhh, well, in the past a P stood for penalty, so I'm going to continue on that avenue. I am going to guess that it stands for Penalty Points, which would calculate how many penalties a player has scored. I've already dove into what a penalty is, but I'm still not sure when they come into play for a team. So it might just be how clutch a player is to be able to score when the entire game is on the line. 4/10 confidence.

"SH"
Surely SH stands for shots, right? A shot would be whenever an ice skater does the pushing motion with their wooden, straw-less broom towards the cylinder that is directed at the opponent's guarded fabric. This seems pretty basic, but there is also a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that this could possibly be something else since the past few abbreviations are less generic. 9/10 confidence.

"EV"
Again? Another EV? Why are there two different categories that are titled EV? I can only assume that they mean different things, so this time I choose to believe that it stands for Expected Vectors. I wasn't very good at math, but I'm pretty sure that a vector is just a straight line. So maybe this is calculating the trajectory of each shot? Maybe it measures how much of a curve or bend there is to each shot? so the higher the EV the more likely a player's shot is to curve. But can a puck even curve? I know a soccer ball can because James Ward-Prowse is the king of free kicks. But can a puck curve on a shot? I have absolutely no idea. I give this one 0/10 confidence.

"PP"
Another PP. (hehe). But as I was looking at this one, I noticed that there was a bigger heading that said "assists". But penalties are just one skater and a goalie, so I am utterly lost here. I don't know how you could possibly have an assist while shooting a penalty, so it must mean something different. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this one means Penalties Procured? Maybe if you flop you get a penalty? I don't know, the only hockey I've watched since 2008 has either been SHL streams or Disney+ animated games. 1/10 confidence.

"SH"
Gosh darnit, hockey please stop using the same abbreviations as other stats. In the assists category, I don't quite know what SH could stand for. I don't even have a good guess. So I'm going to assume it's the same as last time with "shots" but because its in the assist category, I think it means shots that were rebounded off the goalie and then scored. So kind of like an assist but really just a failed shot attempt and then someone cleaning up the rebound. 2/10 confidence.

"S"
Welp. All this time I thought SH stood for shots, but it might actually just be the S abbreviation. Maybe S stands for slides? I feel like a slide option was available when I played NHL08, but it was so long ago. But I don't have any better ideas so I'm going to go with Slides. Defensive players might slide to try to block a shot. Since the puck is on the ground most of the time, the majority of shots will also be on the ground, so it make sense for a defensive player to slide their bodies in front of the shot to try to block a shot. 4/10 confidence.

"S%"
If I wasn't in trouble before, I definitely am now. So now I feel like S is supposed to actually mean shot and S% is supposed to mean the percentage of shots a player makes that is on target, but sine I called S sliding, we're going to stick with that. So S% would be the percentage of times that a player slides and it results in a blocked shot. Because sometimes the shooter will see the slide coming and either juke around the sliding player or loft the cylinder above the slider and make an actual shot at goal. 2/10 confidence.

"TOI"
The first thing I think of when I see this is ROI which means Return On Investment, but this is hockey, not the stock market. Most other sports only have one stat that begins with T: turnover. So I believe that this stat means Turnovers On Ice. It measures how often turnovers happen while you are on the ice. A turnover would be described as a change of possession that is not result of a shot. So if a team takes a shot but it is blocked and/or saved, then it is not turnover. But if a team loses possession in the middle of the ice without shooting, then it's a turnover. 6/10 confidence.

"ATOI"
Uhhhhhh, average turnovers on ice? So TOI is the raw data and ATOI is the efficiency data, I think? Usually when a stat has "A" in front of it, the A mens average. So I'm fairly confident in this one. 7/10.

"PPTOI"
Shoot. I am like 95% sure the OI is "on ice" but the T might be wrong. Maybe it just means Time? That would make sense since there isn't a "MIN" abbreviation category. So if that's the case, then I would assume that PPTOI would mean Penalty Points Time On Ice. So maybe it tracks the time it takes for each player to score on their penalties? 3/10 confidence.

"SHTOI"
Another efficiency rating, Shots Time On Ice measures how many shots you take per a minute on the ice. This would calculate how often you shoot while you're playing. So a high number isn't good and a low number isn't good either. You cant to be somewhere in the middle, where you contribute to the offense, but don't completely take it over. 5/10 confidence.

"GA"
I think I know this one. It would be Goals Allowed. This is how a player's plus minus stat would be calculated, G/GA. So it only makes sense to have GA as a stat so that the +/- stat can be calculated. 8/10 confidence.

"TA"
Turnovers Allowed would be the most syntaxical answer, but that doesn't make a lick of sense. In the past, I have thought T stands for turnover or time. Neither of those make much sense if A stands for Allowed. So maybe Times Attempted? Granted, I don't know what the times attempted would be referring to. But since we're past the goals and assists categories, maybe it's talking about hits? Sometimes hits can miss. So I'm going to go with Times Attempted. And as silly as that sounds, it makes more sense than turnovers attempted or time attempted. 2/10 confidence.

"W"
I notice that this is in the "fights" category on the index, so I assume this is the number of fights that a player has won. But can we take a moment to just talk about why hockey allows fights? I mean, sure it's entertaining, but is it really worth it? No other sports (other than boxing or MMA or wrestling lol) condone violence in this sort of way. But for some reason fights are just a natural part of hockey and have rules surrounding it that isn't simply "don't fight"? That seems strange. Nevertheless, W is measuring how many fights a player has won. Though I don't really know how the stat sheet constitutes who won a fight short of a KO. 9/10 confident.

"L"
The inverse of W, the number of fights a player has "lost." 9/10 confident.

"W"
In the faceoffs category, I finally feel certain I know what something means. When a goalie collects a puck and doesn't distribute it within a set amount of time (I think), then the ref blows his whistle and sets up a faceoff. That's when opposing skaters line up and try to control the cylinder at the same time enough to pass it to a friendly skater. So calculating the number of times a player has won one of these faceoffs makes sense. 10/10 confident.

"L"
Same as W for faceoffse, but inversed. The number of faceoffs that a player has lost. A seemgingly worthless statistic since it's simply the reciprocal of the W stat, but I will allow it for the time being because I'm not too good at the numbers thing.

"FO%"
More than likely, this is the efficiency data for faceoffs. It measures how often a player wins their faceoffs. So higher equals better. 10/10 confident.

"GWG"
At first glance, I can sound out a stat like Game-Winning Goals. And that makes sense, I suppose. It would calculate how many times a player scored the last goal from a tied game. I don't know exactly what use a stat like that measures, but I don't see another stat similar in my head, so I'm going togo with that. 7/10 confident.

"BLK"
This one is obvious. Block. This is when a non-goalie player blocks a shot with either their body or their stick. What I am curious about though is if slides could count as blocks. I would guess yes but I'm not 100 percent sure. but I am 9/10 confident that I have this abbreviation correct.

"HIT"
Can't mess this one up. HIT stands for Hit, a measurement of how often a player knocks an opponent off of the puck. While I know the abbreviation, I'm not absolutely certain of what constitutes a hit in hockey terms. But I am 10/10 confident on the abbreviation.

"GR"
I was fortunate enough to look at the abbreviation heading before seeing this one. The heading said Game Rating, so I assume that's what this abbreviation is for. Granted, I have no earthly idea as to what goes into a game rating, but I am 7/10 confident that that's what the abbreviation is referring to.

"OGR"
Since it's in the same category, I can only assume that the prefix "O" is referring to offense. So this should calculate how well a player performed while in possession of the puck. 8/10 confident.

"DGR"
An obvious inverse of OGR, DGR would measure the Defensive Game Rating, thereby measuring how efficiently or effectively a player protected their own goal. Now, I don't know if both OGR and DGR are for every player or only players that are on offense or on defense, but I am going to assume it is both, though it can probably be just as clear from the plus minus stat.

And that is all of the stats on the SHL index that I could find. There are probably more out there, but I doubt you want to hear me go through them. I imagine that I got several of these wrong, and I apologize. I assure you that this is 100% real and I 100% have no idea what the heckers I am talking about. I joined SHL because I knew it was one of the best sim leagues out there and I was excited to make new friends. I'm sorry I don't know many hockey things, but I am enjoying very much getting to know my fellow Raptors and my fellow Winny Lights.

Did I miss any abbreviations you want my best guess on? Send them below in the comments! And don't forget to like and subscribe! I will be happily doing articles like this every once in a while that show how little I know about hockey. I hope you find as much joy in reading this as I found in writing it. I like making new friends, message me on Discord. Love you, mom.

*Jayba1t* · 03-16-2023, 01:06 AM

Good to know that I had 239 slides this season

10/10 media right here

*domffl* · 03-16-2023, 01:19 AM

So either you are desperate for blocks or you are a sloppy skater smh

***sköldpaddor*** · 03-16-2023, 06:01 AM

every word of this is correct I’m impressed

***Frenchie*** · 03-16-2023, 07:56 AM

This is quality dom, but per our mutual nemesis agreement I must actually say that I dislike this post and say you're a big stinky fart face smh

***BadWolf*** · 03-16-2023, 09:25 AM

10/10 would trust

***Anthique*** · 03-16-2023, 09:47 AM

Yo that's so funny! But it would probably the same if I tried to do the same with any other sports lol

***Seany148*** · 03-16-2023, 10:37 AM

YOOOO I MIGHT BE GOOD BASED ON THIS

**esilverm** · 03-16-2023, 11:01 AM

Ooh do the advanced stats next.

Also if it isn't clear, hovering over the stat abbreviation gives the full name for each stat but I'm sure you already knew that.

Pass Forfeit (D) ● Player Profile
Kraken

Special thanks to Blitz, jhockey, Ragnarr, and sulo for the gorgeous sigs <3

[Image: DG0jZcS.png]

*thiefofcheese* · 03-20-2023, 01:01 PM

I just want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. I forget how many abbreviations are used and how thy can be seen by people that don't know what they mean.

Well done!

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