With a mind to try to quantify what is seen as a key intangible quality of a hockey player, I decided to take a look at game-breaking ability. I wanted to find evidence of that clutchness of our favourite overachievers. To define a game-breaker, I consider him a player who would score a timely goal to help his team's fortunes.
I focused my attention on two scoring states at five-on-five: tied, and trailing by one goal. Why five-on-five? Because those third- and fourth-liners that we love so much rarely see power-play time, so they would be frozen out of an all-situations analysis.