Page 69 of Hard to Get

I nod slowly. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Yeah. I want to see the data.”

“It’s not bad, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I have some sense of my own abilities. It may not be bad, but I’m not a top-tier D-man.”

“You could be.”

“You’re gonna show me how?”

I smile. “Yes.”

After we eat and clean up and feed our dogs, we go up to my office where my computer is. I pull another chair up to the desk and bring up some of the charts I put together. “A major downside of the traditional plus-minus statistic is that it depends on both teammates and opponents, so it’s not always a good measure of a player’s individual contributions. For example, a player on a below-average team could have a plus-minus that is lower than average simply because of his linemates.”

“Sure.”

“So we developed a new stat. We call it our Boosted Player Metrics, or BPM. And it doesn’t depend on the rest of the team.”

“Okaaaay.”

“Stop me if I get too involved. I love talking about this stuff.”

“Stop.”

I level a look at him.

“Kidding!”

“Okay. You know Corsi and Fenwick.”

He nods.

“There are a bunch of other metrics—expected goals percentage, takeaway-giveaway different, high danger scoring chances—and this is what puts it all together.” I open a scatter plot. “It shows two measurements—games played and your defensive metric.”

“That graph makes my eyes glaze over.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I know. I’ll explain it. First, I need to go over all the components of the defensive metric. This is the linear model we use…” I point at the screen.

“Jesus.” He falls back in his chair. “My head is exploding.”

18

JAYDEN

Christ, her brain is amazing.

I should get up and walk out of here. But I don’t want to, because there’s something insanely hot about her being that smart, that competent at what she does.

“I’m sorry.” Her expression suggests she’s worried I am literally exploding.

“It’s okay. Go on.”

“Okay, where J is the number of skaters in the league, and K is the number of goalies in the league…”

I listen and I’m trying to understand.

“And this is our boosted plus minus BPM, offensive plus-minus, and defensive plus-minus.”