Penguins Update: Johnson and Gudbranson Provide Heart

This feature actually began as a reply to Mike, one of our faithful and astute PenguinPoop commenters. As I began to fashion my response the juices began to flow, and I figured I’d make it into a full-blown article.

So Mike, this one’s for you.

You mentioned that numbers lie, which reminded me of an old adage popularized by Mark Twain. “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

I’m not saying advanced stats don’t have value when evaluating a player’s performance. Obviously, they reflect certain aspects of a player’s game.

Do they tell the whole story? Of course not. They don’t reveal those wonderful intangibles that make us who we are. Do we have heart? Do we have…