Penalty Minutes - What Am I Looking At/For!?

Having read a lot of news articles about the NHL, I see that a players stats are not very useful for defensemen.

After quoting points, and goals and assists, we come to penalty minutes.

I quote "Chara is great at the blue line, and is guaranteed 100 PM (penalty minutes) per year".

OK, so what is going on?

Are they praising Chara for having such a lot of PMs (which concedes Powerplay's, which increases the oppositions chance of scoring)?
Are they praising Chara for his ability to rack up PMs, even though it leads to chances of a goals against them?
Are they looking for a defenseman that can play physically enough to give up so many Penalty Minutes?
Most importantly, are they saying a lot of PMs are a good thing for a defenseman?
Wouldn't Chara be better if he had 0 PM?

Please explain, or perhaps, come up with ideas for a new stat (that is meaningful) for defensemen after points and PMs have been exhausted.

Date

Fri 09/29/06, 10:29 am EST

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Davis21wylieMVP

1173 days ago

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+/- is good, provided you understand the team's context. If a guy is the only player in plus on his whole team, odds are that he's their best two-way player. I'd like to see just "minuses", since pluses are an offensive stat already kind of accounted for by Points.

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ThecrookedcapAll-Star

1173 days ago

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I would say #3. It means he plays the game with great physicality. I would agree with Davis that Plus/Minus is the best evaluative stat of a defenseman.

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