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 covers the actual numbers, and Canucks Army's Corsi explainer breaks down what they mean.