We are hitting levels of SillyStats thought not to be humanly possible. Inspired by work done by the sports blog he partnered with earlier in the season (they were nice enough for him to relent), Abdi has prepared a brand new stat! Its name: xI, short for “eXpected Interest”. The math is a bit fuzzy (he was never good on that except for dealing with money), but the gist of the calculation is that you input a player’s shots for/goals for and shots against/goals against and come out with a number that represents how likely a score from either team is to happen when the given player is on the ice. This winds up favoring young offensive talent and disfavoring defensemen (especially good ones or ones on good teams), which is pretty accurate, he would say. xI may not be a good stat to use when trying to build a hockey team that will win games, but if you’re looking to put asses in seats? It’s right there for ya. Go nuts.