VALUE OF EACH GOAL SCORED
WHAT IS A GOAL WORTH
The relationship is that a goal — saved or scored — is worth about 1/3 of a point.
So if we think about how much a player adds to a lineup, every 10 goals is worth between 3 and 4 points over the course of 82 games.
CLUTCH GOAL SCORING (DOESN’T EXIST)
(Mar 2014)
We usually count goals equally. The truth is, though, that goals are not equal in value. Goals impact the final outcome of the game differently by the state of the game of the goal was scored in. This calculation is called WPA, win probability added.
WPA is calculated as the win probability for the scoring team after the goal was scored subtracted by the win probability before the goal was scored. I added up all of the WPA added from his goals to calculate the total amount of win probability a player added to his team with his goals.
What can we learn about a player from his clutchness in scoring? Very little, as no player seems to have any reasonable capacity to sustain any significant deviation from the mean ‘clutchness’ in large sample sizes.
VALUE OF EACH MARGINAL GOAL SCORED (AND IMPLICATIONS ON FREE AGENCY/TDL SHOPPING)
What we see is that the number of additional points we expect a team to earn for adding an extra goal decreases as our imaginary team’s goal differential increases, and the relationship isn’t linear.
From a practical perspective, this means that it’s a lot easier for a bad team to improve than it is for a good team.
For a team at the top it’s a lot more difficult to improve their place in the standings by spending money.
All of which is to say that it’s not all that surprising that teams often fail to strike gold and establish dominance through free agency: it’s not that they’re not getting better, it’s just that the numbers are often stacked against them from the start.
POINTS PER GOAL
Teams that score 3 goals typically win or at least get to overtime
Once a team scores 5 goals, they are very likely to win, and only a few teams have scored 6 and not walked away with a win
The first, second, and fourth goals are all worth about a third of a point. The third goal is the most valuable; it’s worth about half a point.
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