10 Interesting (To Me) Stats For This Week - August 12

Welcome back to another week of ’10 Interesting (To Me) Stats’. Over the last couple of weeks we have started looking ahead to the 2025-26 NHL season, looking at potential breakout players based on games-played thresholds or improvements in shot/expected goal rates late last season. Today, we’re devising another list of players to keep an eye on and we’re doing it using tracking data from AllThreeZones.

We are going to look at a couple of explanations before reviewing forwards with either a high carry entry rate in 2024-25, or a rate that was a big improvement over 2023-24

1 – Getting Carried Away

Despite many changes to how hockey is played at the NHL level in recent years, one thing that hasn’t really changed was the importance of carrying the puck into the offensive zone. When looking at which transition stats in 2024-25 helped explain a team’s goal-scoring rate at 5-on-5, one particular stat stood out:

That highlighted number in the last column next to EntryCarryPct, which is just the percentage of a team’s zone entries that are carried in, is the p-value. It being so low indicates that of all the transition stats we looked at (entry rate, exits with possession, exits passed or carried out etc.), this one tells us we are very likely not looking at just random goal-scoring results. There is an important effect by carried entries on goal scoring. This data was just for forwards but the same applies for defencemen.

2 – Getting Carried Away, Part Deux

While carried entries by both forwards and defencemen are stats to look at for team goal scoring, that isn’t true at the player level when it comes to point production. The p-value for individual forwards, their carried entries, and points per 60 minutes was still valuable (left column in red) but not for defencemen (right column in blue):

That means last year, in terms of points per 60 minutes, carrying the puck into the zone was important for individual forwards but not individual defencemen.

3 – Young Star (Macklin Celebrini)

What makes Macklin Celebrini’s rookie season so exciting isn’t just the 25 goals and 63 points in 70 games, it’s that there was so much good under the hood. The percentage of entries carried in is one of those positive signs as he was sixth among the 274 forwards with at least 200 minutes tracked at 5-on-5, and nestled between two former MVPs:

The fact that Celebrini turned 19 years old less than two months ago makes him a fairly young rookie in the league and he already has a performance like this. He is every bit as advertised and could very well be the best player in the league in five years.

4 – Young Star, Part Deux (Connor Bedard)

Celebrini may be the best player in the league in five years, but we shouldn’t discount what Connor Bedard has done in Chicago. There has been some consternation about him possibly stagnating, but that’s complete nonsense. Here is the entire list of forwards over the last two years with at least 200 minutes tracked in each season who’ve carried in their entries at least 70% of the time in each season:

I feel comfortable saying that if a player finds himself on a list of those players, over a two-year span as a teenager, maybe the consternation is overblown. Bedard will be exceptional once there is a competent NHL team around him.

5 – Please Just Stay Healthy (Filip Chytil)

At a certain point, a player’s health is the biggest concern, and that is the case with Filip Chytil and his concussion issues. And we really should want to see him as healthy as possible because he looked excellent in limited action last season. In fact, Jack Hughes and Connor McDavid led forwards by carried entries in 2024-25, and third place was Vancouver’s newest second-line centre:

It seems very plausible that if Elias Pettersson, Thatcher Demko, and Filip Chytil can get-and-stay healthy for the vast majority of the 2025-26 season, then the Vancouver Canucks will be much improved, and Chytil will have a genuine breakout.

6 – Good, Great, Gran, Wonderful (Mikael Granlund)

One area Anaheim struggled in 2024-25 was carried entries as their forwards had the fifth-lowest percentage in the league (their defencemen were about league average). There was a player signed this summer who should help the Ducks forwards in this regard as Mikael Granlund carried in his entries nearly two-thirds of the time last year, which was in line with some other excellent playmakers:

There are holes in Granlund’s game, particularly on defence, but when it comes to elevating the scoring of the players around him, he can help. It should at least make the Ducks a lot more fun to watch.

7 – Underrated Depth (Brandon Saad)

Brandon Saad was quietly productive once he signed with Vegas last year, posting just under 2.0 points per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 across 29 games played. He signed again with Vegas in the offseason, so look for him to have another good year as he builds off a carried entry percentage last season of nearly 70%, and in line with some of the top forwards in the league:

Like Granlund, there are some holes in Saad’s game that keep him from being a top-line option. Nonetheless, Saad is a very good player to have as a middle-6 winger and he should be a very good contributor once again for the Golden Knights.

8 – Geek Squad (Conor Geekie)

Tampa Bay’s top two forwards last year by carry entry percentage were Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov, and that’s not much of a surprise. What may be a surprise was who finished third, because it wasn’t Jake Guentzel, Brandon Hagel, or Anthony Cirelli. It was rookie Conor Geekie at 62.4%, which was in line with some pretty good wingers across the league:

Geekie spent most of the season with Tampa Bay, but he also had 11 goals and 20 points in 24 AHL games. With a pro year under his belt and offensive numbers like this, look for Geekie to be an impact player in 2025-26, though Tampa’s forward depth will minimize his role.

9 – Chillin’ Like A Dylan (Dylan Guenther)

There are 264 forwards in our sample who were not rookies in 2024-25. Among forwards who did carried the puck in at least 50% of the time the year before, there was a young star from Utah who had the fourth-largest improvement in percentage of entries carried into the zone in 2024-25 compared to 2023-24:

Dylan Guenther is thought of as a goal-scorer, and he absolutely is a great goal scorer, but he also has a playmaking dimension. In fact, over the last two seasons, his rate of primary assists at 5-on-5 (0.6 per 60 minutes) isn’t far behind teammates Clayton Keller (0.67) and Nick Schmaltz (0.63). Maybe it’s one more year until Guenther goes truly supernova, but it feels like he’s knocking on the door.

10 – Flyin’ Ryan (Ryan Hartman)

Keep in mind that Minnesota’s Ryan Hartman was the team’s second-line centre in the playoffs and got the most 5-on-5 ice time per game of anyone not on the top line. We keep that in mind because of the 216 forwards who had at least 200 tracked minutes in each of the last two seasons, Hartman had the second-largest jump in percentage of entries being carried in:

Minnesota has Joel Eriksson Ek as the top centre and if Marco Rossi doesn’t get traded, they have him as a second-line option. But the Wild believe they are now positioned to make a run in the postseason and if Hartman can carry over his stellar late-season play, it’ll be hard for the team to keep him away from a second-line role.

Until next week.