Islanders’ Anders Lee: The Unluckiest Man in the NHL

While the math is just numbers, and the players are not easily predictable robots, that number is telling. It feels as if night in and night out, he has multiple great chances from around the net that get stopped, either from an incredible save or a poor shot. With how things have gone this season, he easily could be at the 30-goal mark already.

Comparing Hyman to Lee

If there is one takeaway from this season for Lee, it is that it will only get better from here. While the “law of averages” is just a fallacy, these numbers do, in some sense, correct themselves. If each shot and save were a little different, his season could look a lot better. While the season is nearing an end, taking this idea for projections towards next season is where the value in the metric lies.

Last season, Zach Hyman had the lowest goals above expected with a negative-15.2. He still finished the season with 36 goals, but he had a league-leading 51.2 expected goals. A purely dominant season from Hyman did not get the recognition it should have, but this season has been a different story. Once again, he is leading the league with 45.1 expected goals, and he has 50 goals. Now on the other side of the goals above expected model, he has gotten luckier than not. While this has nothing to do with last season, it does show that good players prevail, and a series of bad luck is not forever. Since Hyman is a similar player to Lee in the sense that both take a majority of their shots from around the crease, at times inflating the expected goals model, there is reason for hope for Lee.

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Hyman is not the lone example of this. Seth Jarvis finished last season with 25.2 expected goals, but just 14 goals. This season, he has 28.9 expected goals and 27 goals. Of course, these numbers are just a computer model, and there are likely other examples arguing the contrary, showing some players who continuously over or underproduce. However, for Lee, he should hold optimism. Last season, he finished with negative-8.6 goals above expected, but in his prior 103 games, he had plus-5.8. He is not historically unlucky, just this season. These computer models exist for a reason, and holding out hope that what he is doing is working and that he just got very unlucky, is the mindset he should have as he approaches the end of this season and the offseason.

With the rise of math in sports, many fans give these models a lot of pushback. The argument is a computer is unable to analyze each player’s intangibles accurately. And in many aspects, that is true. This argument in support of Lee is not to say he has done no wrong, but rather to provide fans with a better understanding of what has gone wrong. This season may or may not be an anomaly, he may have just lost all shooting talent, but it is more likely than not to see him rebound next season, at least in some capacity. Even another five or six goals would go a long way, putting him within reach of 30 goals, a need for the Islanders’ top six.