Meaningless stat, or a reflection?

Many hockey followers believe that plus-minus is a flawed statistic, one that doesn’t properly reflect a player’s effectiveness, but if nothing else, it can serve as a comparative tool within a team. To that end, Jack Johnson has a minus-10 rating in his last 11 games. Over that same span, his partner, Rob Scuderi, is minus-7, Drew Doughty is even, Matt Greene and Alec Martinez are plus-1 and Willie Mitchell is plus-2. What does it mean? That’s open for interpretation, but after practice today, Terry Murray was asked for his opinion of Johnson’s recent overall play…

MURRAY: “His game has been OK. It’s been OK. It needs to be better. He was very good at the start of the year. There’s pockets in the games that we’ve played so far this year that he’s been very good, and there’s other pockets where his game has dipped. To me, it’s a young defenseman learning to focus and concentrate and give that part of it the best effort every night, every game. Whenever you lose that concentration for a moment, you end up with a goal like the one scored against with Calgary the other night. It’s a line change, it’s a breakout from behind their net, and you’re just not maybe quite focused enough to see that guy coming, although he’s coming at about 75 miles an hour. But that’s your responsibility. That’s the read you have to make as a defenseman. So he’s been great on the power play at times this year. A lot of his points have been special teams. Again, there’s a dip. We need him to get back. We need to up that part of our game, to be better, and he’s a big part of it.”