Option 1

The cool new stat that will revolutionize the simulation hockey community is called "efficiency", which also has a counterpart stat of "inefficiency". The stats are calculated by comparing the number of goals a team won or lost by in all their games. If a team wins by a margin of 3 or more goals or loses by a margin of 2 or fewer goals, they increase their inefficiency stat. If a team loses by a margin of 3 or more goals or wins by a margin of 2 or fewer goals then they receive an increase to their efficiency. These stats might be useful for measuring middle of the pack teams who might be overperforming or underperforming compared to expectations. It doesn't help as much for the top and bottom teams, but teams with high efficiency in the middle of the standings are likely overperforming and teams with high inefficiency in the middle of the standings are probably falling short of expectations. Maybe it ends up being something similar to PDO where you expect the values to balance out over time for those middling teams.