Nadia Nadim’s story is a touching one. If you’re not familiar with her story, then I highly recommend that you click. Nadia Nadim’s arrival to the NWSL has not only made us aware of her journey and story, but also briefly revitalized Sky Blue FC’s play-off hopes, who are all but mathematically eliminated from the play-offs..

There is no doubt that Nadim, has had an impact on Sky Blue’s push. But exactly how much of an impact has she had. In six games Nadim has 7 goals and 3 assists, with a 1.27 non–goals per 90, 3 of those goals are counted as game winning goals (all stats are from the NWSL website).

A few weeks ago, on this blog I lamented about Sky Blue’s conversion rate of .192 among one of the league’s worse. With the question being, was the team unlucky, or was the low conversion rate directly related to personnel. On one hand the underlying statistics suggested that Sky Blue wasn’t playing that badly. With a TSR of .496 it showed that there weren’t getting out played and that they were actually holding their own. The problem was that the team had 16 points from 16 games, with an average of 1 point per game (hard math I know). Whether was luck, or personnel was to blame for the lack of goals, Sky Blue needed goals.

With the arrival of Nadim though the team’s play hasn’t dramatically changed. In the 5 games that Nadim has started, the team’s underlying statistics haven’t changed. Their TSR is slightly higher at .503, showing that their position in the game hasn’t dramatically changed. In fact, Sky Blue has taken almost the same amount of shots. Before Nadim, the team averaged 12 shots per game. In the 5 games since Nadim has started, Sky Blue has taken 13.6 shots representing almost identical tallies. However in those 5 games the team has won 4 and lost 1. They’ve scored 12 goals in 5 games, where Nadim has not only scored 7 of those but has also assisted on another 3. To put that in perspective, the team in their previous 16 games had only scored 16 goals (16 seems to be the magic pre-Nadim number). Nadim has a personal conversation rate at a .58, the team is now converting at a .315. Correlation may not prove causation, but with very little changes in the team’s underlying stats you can almost definitely say: Nadim’s arrival has helped Sky Blue with what it needed most, goals.

All of this comes with a very large caveat, Nadim has only played in 5 games in the NWSL. Conversion rates, especially for individuals are particularly volatile, and there is no way that Nadim maintains a .58 conversion rate, which will fall to a more realistic number. The famous saying is form is temporary; class is permanent. It is going to be interesting to see what happens with Nadim, with 2 games left it wouldn’t be unimaginable for her form to continue or for the team to benefit from the extra attention that she draws to keep scoring goals. The question really is, how much of this is form and how much is Nadim herself. Yes, she has only scored 8 goals in 51 appearances for Denmark, but two of those were in the Algarve Cup knocking the US out of the tournament.

The real shame is that we probably will never know. Nadim most likely will be going back to Denmark after her loan, and most likely we will only see her again in a similar short loan, as she has hinted that she will continue to juggle soccer and her academic career in Denmark, where she is studying to be a doctor. Even though we might never know the answer, what we can definitely know, that Nadia Nadim almost single handedly pulled Sky Blue FC back into the NWSL play-off race.