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I wonder how this would look in a low scoring sport like hockey or soccer. Similar to basketball, you could compare over and under performance to xG per shot. Do teams with higher average quality of shot per more consistently?

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Hi Zach, that's an interesting point - the small sample size is definitely an issue. The xG is also an interesting stat to look at, because as far as I understand doesn't take into account the quality / ability of the player. So looking that might tell us more about the player. Some players like Son Heung-min vastly over perform xG afaik, which I guess speaks to their striking/finishing ability.

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Yeah I think there is some argument whether a player can consistently outperform their xG. I think players like Messi may be able to but overall players don’t really do that. I was thinking more if a team is consistently getting high quality shots, is that better than taking a large amount of poor shots.

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Right. Yeah I guess the idea of xG would be that 5 chances with xG of 0.1 would be essentially the same as one with an xG of 0.5. To my mind, xG tells you about the quality of chances that are being created by the team.

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