Top 20 'worst forward lines' in the NHL?

There is always a ton of debate in and around the National Hockey League around who the best player is and who the best teams are, and in those debates you can expect to find plenty of healthy disagreements. At the end of the day a fans perspective will often be very subjective, but raw numbers can be more difficult to argue against.

That's why this week the crew over at Money Puck used some raw numbers to make a few determinations about how forward lines have been playing this season in the NHL. More specifically, their team used advanced analytics to work out who they feel are the worst forward lines in the NHL this season, at least prior to the turn of the calendar year.

To come up with their list they used Expected Goals Percentage (xGoals%) which is effectively a reading of how many goals each line contributes to their team when compared to how many they give up. Lines that give up more goals than they put in will have a percentage below 50% whereas those who score more than they allow will find themselves with a percentage above 50%.

There were some very surprising candidates on the list including a number of lines from some of the top teams in the National Hockey League, including the Boston Bruins, Dallas Stars and Winnipeg Jets. This of course doesn't mean that any of the players on these lines are bad, or even that any of the lines themselves are bad, but is instead merely a snapshot of how they have been performing thus far this season relative to their competition.