Analytics quietly won hockey — the eye-test crowd just hasn't admitted it
Expected goals, zone entries, controlled exits — the stuff that got mocked as nerd nonsense a few years ago is now baked into how every good front office builds a roster. The teams that ignored it kept paying for gritty veterans who couldn't move the puck, and it showed. The eye test still matters, but it works best as a tiebreaker, not the whole argument. If your favorite player passes the eye test and fails every underlying number, the numbers are usually telling you something the highlight reel hid. [Hockey Reference's advanced-stats primer](https://www.hockey-reference.com/about/advanced_stats.html) covers the actual numbers, and [Canucks Army's Corsi explainer](https://canucksarmy.com/news/explaining-corsi-advanced-stat-interpret-hockey) breaks down what they mean.