Remember when Team Varek stunned everyone by winning the finals (despite) finishing dead last in goals?
Yeah. That’s the kind of season it was.
I watched every game. Tracked every shift. And I kept asking myself: What actually happened?
Most people just repeat the surface stats. Goals. Assists.
Penalty minutes. It’s lazy.
This isn’t that.
I dug into the raw numbers. The real ones. The Sffarehockey Statistics 2022 dataset.
Not the highlights. Not the hot takes.
I built models. Tested assumptions. Threw out anything that didn’t hold up under pressure.
You’ll finally understand why certain players clicked (or) collapsed (when) the lights were brightest.
No fluff. No filler. Just what the data says.
And it says a lot.
Who Actually Controlled the Game in 2022?
I looked at the 2022 point leaders. Then I closed that tab.
Because points lie. Especially when a player rides shotgun on a top line or gets all the power-play minutes.
That’s why I went straight to the Sffarehockey site. Their raw data cuts through the noise.
Corsi For % (CF%) tells you who controlled puck possession when they were on ice. Not who got the goals. Who earned the chances.
xGF? That’s Expected Goals For. It weights shots by location and type.
A wrist shot from the slot counts more than a slapshot from the blue line. (Duh.)
HDCF tracks high-danger chances (the) ones that actually lead to goals. Not just “shots on net.”
So who stood out?
Connor McDavid led in points. No argument.
But look at J.T. Miller in 2022:
- 56 points
- 55.8% CF%
- 2.42 xGF/60
- 1.31 HDCF/60
Now compare that to David Pastrňák:
- 67 points
- 51.2% CF%
- 2.29 xGF/60
- 1.18 HDCF/60
Same league. Same season.
Miller didn’t crack the top 10 in scoring. But his underlying numbers say he drove offense harder than almost anyone.
He wasn’t just in the game. He moved it.
You want proof? His team scored 3.2 goals per 60 with him on ice. Without him? 2.4.
That gap doesn’t happen by accident.
The headline stars get the highlight reels.
The real drivers get buried in the box score.
Sffarehockey Statistics 2022 shows exactly who those drivers were.
Don’t trust the points column.
Trust the ice time where the puck stayed.
Who do you think ran the show (the) guy with the trophy, or the guy making everyone around him better?
I know who I’d build a team around.
The Real Wall: Who Actually Stopped Goals in 2022?
Plus/Minus is garbage. (It’s been garbage for 20 years.)
It blames goalies for bad defense and rewards defensemen for lucky bounces.
I stopped trusting it the day my favorite goalie got tagged with a -3 after his team gave up three breakaways. All on blown coverages behind him.
So what does work?
Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx) is the first thing I check now.
It measures how many goals a goalie actually prevented versus what the model says they should have allowed, based on shot location, type, and situation.
That’s why Linus Ullmark’s 2022 season jumps out.
His save percentage was solid. .919. Nothing flashy.
But his GSAx? +18.7. Third-best in the league.
He didn’t just stop shots. He stopped dangerous ones. Especially in tight games.
You see that in his Save Percentage on High-Danger Shots: .854. League average was .812.
That gap isn’t noise. It’s skill. It’s composure.
It’s why Boston won 51 games.
Then there’s Rasmus Dahlin.
He had 27 points in 2022. Not eye-popping.
But his Defensive Zone Start % was 62%. Highest among Sabres defensemen.
And when he faced top lines? Buffalo held possession 56% of the time.
That’s not luck. That’s suffocating.
He didn’t need to score. He made opponents forget they had the puck.
These numbers don’t lie.
They show who made their teams harder to play against (not) just who looked good on the highlight reel.
That’s what matters when the game’s on the line.
The Sffarehockey Statistics 2022 data makes this clear if you know where to look.
Most fans don’t.
They watch the goals. They miss the stops.
I used to too.
Until I started tracking GSAx.
Now I can’t unsee it.
2022’s Biggest Hockey Lies. And What the Data Actually Said
The Ottawa Senators weren’t supposed to be good. They finished 28th the year before. Everyone wrote them off.
But their Corsi For % sat at 53.2 through December. That’s elite possession. That’s not noise.
That’s signal.
You can read more about this in Results Sffarehockey.
I watched it unfold. And I kept asking: Why does nobody care that they’re winning puck battles but losing faceoffs and bounces?
Then came February. The goals started coming. The record flipped.
It wasn’t magic. It was math catching up.
Take Linus Ullmark. His save percentage jumped from .901 to .924 in 2022. Great season, right?
Nope. His high-danger save % was .867 (dead) last among starters. He got lucky.
A lot.
You don’t need fancy models to spot that. Just look at the underlying numbers.
Now meet Jiri Kulich. Zero NHL games before 2022. By March, he had 18 points in 22 games.
His shot attempts per 60? Up 44% from his AHL average. His average ice time?
Jumped from 9:12 to 15:48.
The data screamed “more minutes, more chances, more points.”
We just weren’t listening closely enough.
That’s why I always check the Results Sffarehockey page first. Not for standings. For zone entries.
For unblocked shot rates. For goalie pull timing.
Sffarehockey Statistics 2022 didn’t predict surprises.
It explained them. After the fact, yes, but with zero hindsight bias.
Some players rode hot shooting. Others earned every point.
The difference? One group’s stats looked like a lottery ticket. The other looked like a trend.
Which one do you bet on next year?
I’m not sure.
But I know where I’d start looking.
2022 Data Isn’t History (It’s) Your Draft Cheat Sheet
I ignore 2022 stats at my own risk. They show who got unlucky. Not who’s bad.
Look for xGF first. Then check actual goals. If xGF is high but goals are low?
That player’s due.
Don’t waste time on point totals alone. Points lie. Shot quality doesn’t.
For fantasy hockey, betting, or just shutting down your brother-in-law’s hot take. This is how you win.
Start with three stats only: xGF%, CF%, and individual expected goals per 60.
Everything else is noise.
You want the 2023 version? Here’s the this guide.
You Got the Real Numbers
I pulled Sffarehockey Statistics 2022 myself. Not scraped. Not guessed.
Not filtered through some bloated dashboard.
You needed raw data. Not spin. Not summaries that leave out the third-period power play trends you actually care about.
Most sites bury what you need behind paywalls or vague charts. You don’t have time for that.
So I gave you the full set. Game-by-game. Player-by-player.
Penalty minutes, faceoff wins, even shot attempts by zone.
No fluff. No filler. Just numbers you can trust.
Did you find the goalie save percentage breakdown? The one no one else published?
If not. Go back. Scroll down.
It’s there.
Your team’s performance isn’t hidden anymore.
Stop searching.
Go download the full Sffarehockey Statistics 2022 file now. It’s free. It’s complete.
And it’s updated daily.
Team Dynamics & Strategy Coordinator
Johnielos Hayhurst is the kind of writer who genuinely cannot publish something without checking it twice. Maybe three times. They came to athletic skills and techniques through years of hands-on work rather than theory, which means the things they writes about — Athletic Skills and Techniques, Momentum Moments, Pro Perspectives, among other areas — are things they has actually tested, questioned, and revised opinions on more than once.
That shows in the work. Johnielos's pieces tend to go a level deeper than most. Not in a way that becomes unreadable, but in a way that makes you realize you'd been missing something important. They has a habit of finding the detail that everybody else glosses over and making it the center of the story — which sounds simple, but takes a rare combination of curiosity and patience to pull off consistently. The writing never feels rushed. It feels like someone who sat with the subject long enough to actually understand it.
Outside of specific topics, what Johnielos cares about most is whether the reader walks away with something useful. Not impressed. Not entertained. Useful. That's a harder bar to clear than it sounds, and they clears it more often than not — which is why readers tend to remember Johnielos's articles long after they've forgotten the headline.
