So you go over to the ESPN stats site right now, and you’ll see that Douglas Murray (can’t I call you Doug?) is tied for the league lead in plus-minus, at +15, tied with Chris Phillips. Holy God! That’s a pretty amazing stat, given that the Sharks are +10 overall (including PP) while the Sens are +20.

I’ve never put a huge amount of stock in plus-minus as a purely defensive measure, because lots of things can skew it. I did an analysis once that showed that teams with a poor power play generally have players with a higher +/- than teams with a good power play. It makes sense. If you don’t score on the PP, that means a higher percentage of your goals must come on even strength (ES), which boosts your +/-. Only ES and short handed goals count as a plus. And only ES and SH goals against count for a minus.

In my view, when you’re rating a defensive defenseman, you really want only half of what the +/- stat give you. You want ES goals against only, because a defenseman’s job is to prevent goals, not score them. If Larry gives up 20 ES goals, but they score 21 when he’s on the ice, he’s +1. And if Pete gives up no goals, and scores 1, he’s +1, just like Larry. But Pete is a much better defensemen than Larry.

So let me start with a little factoid: Douglas Murray has not been on the ice for a even strength goal against since October 18th vs. Detroit. That means, he’s been perfect for 10 games, over a month. Unbelievable.

The NHL doesn’t publish this information exactly (you’d have to pore through the game logs) but luckily there are some good stats sites out there, and I turned to hockeynumbers.com. They have a stat called EH-, which is defined as “Goals against average while on ice @ even strength”. They don’t publish the formula, but I’m assuming it’s goals per 60 minutes of time. Murray is the best on the Sharks, with an EH- of 0.3. If that means what I think it means, that’s pretty astounding. Just for the record, and unsurprisingly, Alexei Semenov is the worst with an EH- of 4.1 (Kaspar is technically worse, but he only played 3 games).

So I went overboard, as I usually do, and made a spreadsheet. Here’s the list of the top 10 defensemen in the NHL this year (who have played over 10 games) in EH- (and I have no idea why there’s a big gap here):

Murray leads the league. Chris Phillips, the man who is tied with Murray at +15, is not in the top 20 (1.6). There are other factors that can skew this stat, like strength of linemates and strength of opposition, but this is a better raw stat than regular +/-. Douglas Murray has been one of the best two or three defensive defenseman in the NHL this year.