Reading a hockey box score — and what plus-minus hides
Every column on a hockey box score, what it tells you, and the three that mislead people most often — including the one stat that has been quietly discredited for years.
A hockey box score is denser than it looks. Here is what each part is telling you, and where it lies.
The line score
Goals by period, plus overtime and the shootout if they happened. Two things worth noticing: which period a team took over, and whether the winner scored in an empty net, which makes a 4–2 look more comfortable than it was.
Shots on goal (SOG)
Shots that would have gone in if the goalie had not stopped them. Missed shots and blocked shots are not included — this is the first thing people get wrong. A team can badly outplay another and trail on shots because half of theirs were blocked.
Shots are a decent proxy for territorial control over a full game, and a poor one over a period.
The scoring summary
The most information per line anywhere in hockey. Each goal gives you the time, the scorer, up to two assists, and the strength:
- EV — even strength, five a side
- PP — power play, a man up
- SH — short-handed, a man down (and the most demoralising goal in the sport)
- EN — empty net, goalie pulled
- PS — penalty shot
A team that wins on special teams looks different in the scoring summary from a team that wins at even strength, and that tells you far more than the final score.
The skater columns
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| G, A, PTS | Goals, assists, points. Up to two assists per goal |
| +/− | Plus-minus — see below |
| SOG | Shots on goal |
| PIM | Penalty minutes |
| BLK | Blocked shots |
| FO | Face-offs won–lost |
| TOI | Time on ice, where the source has it |
Time on ice is the underrated one. It tells you who the coach actually trusts, which is often more informative than the points column.
Plus-minus, and why to distrust it
A player gets +1 when they are on the ice for an even-strength or short-handed goal for, and −1 for one against.
The problems are structural:
- It ignores power-play goals for, but counts short-handed goals against — so penalty-killers are punished for doing a hard job.
- It does not adjust for quality of opposition. A defenceman who plays the top line every night takes losses a third-pairing player never faces.
- It does not adjust for who you play with. Skate beside a great centre and your number improves.
- It is enormously noisy. Goals are rare, so a handful of bounces swing a season's figure.
Analysts moved on years ago to shot-share and expected-goals measures, which count far more events and are therefore far less noisy. Plus-minus persists in box scores because it is old and it is easy to compute. Read it, but do not conclude anything from it.
The goalie line
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| SA | Shots against |
| SV | Saves |
| GA | Goals against |
| SV% | Saves ÷ shots against |
| MIN | Minutes played |
Save percentage is the number that matters, and .900 is roughly the line between a good night and a bad one. Goals-against average depends heavily on how much shooting the team in front allows, so it says as much about the skaters as the goalie.
One warning: shot quality is invisible here. Thirty easy shots from the point is a quieter night than fifteen from the slot, and the box score cannot tell them apart.
What is missing
A box score will not tell you who controlled play, whose zone entries worked, or whether a goalie was excellent or merely undisturbed. For that you need shot-location and expected-goals data — which is exactly the kind of data that is expensive, licensed, and not free.
On 4IceHockey, college box scores come from our NCAA source and include skater and goalie lines plus scoring summaries. Our scores pages show them on every completed game we have collected.