Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Jonathan Bernier reacts after giving up a goal to Colorado Avalanche center Matt Duchene in the shootout of the Avalanche's 4-3 victory in an NHL hockey game in Denver on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2014. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

(Jen Lute Costella is our new analytics writer, breaking down the fanciest of stats for you each week. She's a mom. She's writing for Puck Daddy. Hence, she calls this slice of stats heaven Puck Momalytics.)

If you have ever watched a hockey game, you have heard about a goalie giving up a softy. Soft goals make fans very upset and are often the things that stand out in our memory of games. The goalie may make 15 spectacular saves on high quality scoring chances but that shot he should have had burns into our brains and colors his entire performance.

Once analysts pick up the “soft goal” thread and weave it into their discussion of a goalie, people cling to it and confirmation bias leads them to look for the soft goals. Goalie reputations are built and laid waste to in such a manner. It can be a tough label to shed because confirmation bias loves, well, confirmation. If two seasons ago in the playoffs a goalie gave up a few softies, but since then has given up very few of them, it doesn’t matter.

The moment he gives up another one, what we think is true is confirmed and who doesn’t love to be right?

So what is a soft goal?

Often, a shot from the perimeter that finds its way to the back of the net is considered a soft goal. If the goalie is completely screened by an opposing player or some sort of deflection happens on the way to the net, we are usually more forgiving of the goal. If that perimeter shot doesn’t deflect or the goalie’s vision is not obviously completely obstructed, the goals are labeled as soft. Our understanding of what “soft goals” are goes to the very heart of what we think of as the “eye test” in hockey.

The stats versus eye test debate has grown tiresome for many hockey fans. It really boils down to this: Sometimes, our eyes lie to us.

We have all learned about hockey in various ways, but a lot of our understanding of how the game works is from watching the game. It’s understandable that many people would feel like their knowledge of hockey is under attack by those promoting statistical analysis. If you have learned the game by playing it and/or watching it for years, your sense of pride can feel threatened by people boiling all of that down to a set of numbers. The thing is, that’s really not what stats are intended to do.

As fans or players of the game, we are pretty adept at picking up on generalities and forming a common knowledge base. We can fairly easily identify things like the overall skill of a player, speed on breakaways, whether the team is playing sloppy or sharp and the like. If we want to get into a deeper analysis of how a team or player is performing, statistics are a necessity. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t a real hockey fan if you choose to ignore the stats, but it does mean that you are probably missing some information to form your opinions. Humans have confirmation bias. This often skews what we look for and what we pay attention to when watching hockey.

The speed and fluidity of hockey results in so much data streaming through our eyes and into our brains that we simply cannot possibly process all of it accurately. This is the basic reason for keeping stats in any sport, not even just hockey. It’s really hard to remember what a player did in a few games at the start of the season when the playoffs are starting. So while the eye test certainly has value, it is not reliable for long term analysis of large amounts of input or data. Sports analysts track statistics to have access to reliable information free of the biases that we as humans innately carry with us.

We have constructed a common knowledge base as hockey fans that allows us to recognize things like soft goals. Whether or not we actively realize it, we know that shots from certain areas of the ice carry a greater likelihood of scoring than others. Everyone has experienced that moment of holding their breath when there is a scramble in the goal mouth only to exhale in relief because the puck stayed out or to give an exasperated sigh (or curse word depending on how you roll) because the puck went in. Most hockey fans aren’t holding their breath when a forward skates the puck into the zone and slaps a shot at the net from the boards. Our experience has programmed us to expect that those shots will be stopped. When those shots go in, our brains simply cannot fathom how the goalie let that happen and those moments stick with us.

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