Slatery field notes / NHL / guided learning
Five-on-five versus all-situations hockey statistics
The final score combines different playing environments.
Goals for–against
Goals for–against
The game’s combined goals
The winning total does not mean the team led at five-on-five.
A final score can hide how the teams played at even strength.
A team wins 3–2, but its five-on-five row shows fewer goals than the opponent. That can be completely consistent. Goals on the power play also count on the scoreboard.
Five-on-five selects play with five skaters on each side; check the provider’s goalie-presence and situation rules as well. All-situations totals cover a broader set of environments, including special teams and other states.
Power plays, penalty kills and empty-net play change the on-ice context. A total mixing those states is useful for describing the whole game. A filtered view is useful for examining one part of it.
The key is to preserve the filter. A number from all situations is not automatically an even-strength number, and “even strength” can itself be broader than five-on-five in some displays. Read the exact source label.
Two power-play goals change the combined result.
In our invented game, Team A scores one goal and allows two at five-on-five. It then scores two power-play goals without allowing a goal in that state. All other states contribute zero goals in this simplified example.
Add Team A’s goals for: 1 + 2 = 3. Add its goals against: 2 + 0 = 2. The final illustrated score is 3–2, even though the five-on-five score was 1–2.
The two views answer different questions. The combined count says A won the game. The five-on-five count says A trailed in goals during that selected situation. Neither tells you by itself who created the stronger chances in that situation.
Build the score from its situation totals
Add each state once
The score combines the environments; the filtered row isolates one.
The for and against counts need the same filter.
A shot share or expected-goal share needs matching coverage on both sides. Combining five-on-five shots for with all-situations shots against would create a percentage, but it would blend different parts of the game.
The same goes for the time denominator in a per 60 rate. If the numerator includes only five-on-five events, use the corresponding five-on-five ice time. All-situations minutes answer a different question.
A clear chart prints the state beside the measure: five-on-five shots on goal, all-situations goals, power-play opportunities. These labels prevent familiar hockey words from hiding different samples.
Match the scope on both sides.
Five-on-five for versus five-on-five against
Five-on-five for versus all-situations against
Matching filters make the share explainable.
Use the split to ask where the result came from.
For our example, a useful sentence is: “A won 3–2 after scoring twice on the power play; it trailed 1–2 at five-on-five.” That gives the result and the situation breakdown in ordinary words.
To understand performance more deeply, inspect chances, shots and workload inside each state. One five-on-five goal deficit is a result, not a complete measure of play quality. Keep the sample size visible when the window is short.
For a matchup, read the five-on-five profile and special-teams context as separate layers. They can support different observations. The breakdown becomes more useful when you let the full score and its component environments keep their own meaning.