FanPost

Goals For, Goals Against, And Points

The old adage is that a goal prevented is better than a goal scored. At least as far as getting NHL standings points that seems to be true. I looked at the relationship between goals for, goals against, and standings points for each season 2007-08 through 2013-24. For the 2012-13 season, I multiplied the totals by (82/48) to correct for the shortened season. AGA is Adjusted Goals Against, etc.

> cor.test(Dataset$AGF, Dataset$APTS, alternative="two.sided",

+ method="pearson")

Pearson's product-moment correlation

data: Dataset$AGF and Dataset$APTS

t = 12.5147, df = 208, p-value

alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0

95 percent confidence interval:

0.5706375 0.7263330

sample estimates:

cor

0.655393

> cor.test(Dataset$AGA, Dataset$APTS, alternative="two.sided",

+ method="pearson")

Pearson's product-moment correlation

data: Dataset$AGA and Dataset$APTS

t = -15.7764, df = 208, p-value

alternative hypothesis: true correlation is not equal to 0

95 percent confidence interval:

-0.7941097 -0.6695938

sample estimates:

cor

-0.738073

The correlation between both goals for and goals against with points is strong. It is significantly stronger with goals against.

Graphically

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