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Sportsnet's Grit Chart Midway Through: Grit is meaningless in the NHL

What can Grit do for you? Nothing, without talent.

Sportsnet's Grit Metric
Sportsnet's Grit Metric
screencap via @bookofloob

Now that the NHL Season has reached the half-way point, it's time to look in on the silliness that is the Grit Chart, courtesy of Sportsnet. As I said when I first looked at their "metric":

The screencap above, courtesy of @bookofloob, shows the brand-spankin'-new-for-2013 grit metric (What is Grit?) used by Sportsnet to explain which NHL teams are the grittiest. Grit is comprised of four measurements (stats!): Penalty Minutes, Fights, Hits, and Blocked Shots*. I combined the four into a single metric, weighted equally, and ranked the NHL by Sportsnet's grit metric below:

Team Points/G What is Grit? Rank
Toronto Maple Leafs 1.10 1
Philadelphia Flyers 1.10 2
Columbus Blue Jackets 0.95 3
Washington Capitals 1.13 4
Colorado Avalanche 1.33 5
Montréal Canadiens 1.22 5
Buffalo Sabres 0.65 7
St. Louis Blues 1.51 8
Boston Bruins 1.35 9
Ottawa Senators 0.98 10
New York Islanders 0.80 11
Winnipeg Jets 1.02 11
Pittsburgh Penguins 1.40 13
Los Angeles Kings 1.32 13
Edmonton Oilers 0.74 15
Calgary Flames 0.85 16
Nashville Predators 1.00 17
Vancouver Canucks 1.29 18
Dallas Stars 1.21 19
New York Rangers 1.02 20
Phoenix Coyotes 1.26 21
Anaheim Ducks 1.50 22
Florida Panthers 0.88 23
San Jose Sharks 1.40 24
Tampa Bay Lightning 1.28 24
Carolina Hurricanes 0.98 26
Minnesota Wild 1.07 27
Detroit Red Wings 1.10 28
Chicago Blackhawks 1.50 29
New Jersey Devils 1.02 30

Except for the Blues, the best teams in the league 18th or worse in the grit standings.

The R^2 value of grit score to points is .13, low enough to be meaningless. The R^2 value of population to points is .15, meaning metropolitan population correlates to winning more closely than grit as defined by Sportsnet.