10 Interesting (To Me) Stats For This Week - December 17
We are back with another ’10 Stats’ column and this week we’re going to look at a player who is in trade rumours, a pair of young defensive forwards, some unheralded defencemen, and teams with good and bad depth, among other things.
Player data is from Natural Stat Trick and Evolving Hockey with player tracking data from AllThreeZones. Visuals are from HockeyViz.
1 – Chillin’ Like a Dylan
There have been rumours about Buffalo centre Dylan Cozens potentially being on the trade block. With Buffalo winless in 10 games and Cozens with just 13 points in 31 outings this year, it kind of makes sense.
Buffalo might want to be careful here, though. Cozens hasn’t been much of a producer, but according to the 5-on-5 tracking data from the last three seasons, his rate of carried entries, and scoring chances off those entries, is similar to some high-end talent around the league:
It is notable that his carry chance percentage of 19.3% is well below the league average of 25.3%, but there is still clearly potential for him to hit another level offensively.
2 – Tuch Yeah
While looking through the 5-on-5 carried entries/chances list, the name Alex Tuch stuck out in a big way. He is near the top of the list by chances created off his zone entries over the last three seasons:
Across his 229 regular season games in a Buffalo uniform, Tuch has averaged 28 goals and 44 assists every 82 games. He is also a good penalty killer and can play up and down the lineup. He has just one more year left on his contract after this season, and his annual cap hit is $4.75M. He will be 30 years old when his next deal starts, so it makes me wonder if Tuch is part of Buffalo’s long-term plans, or if they want to trade him for what should be a pretty nice haul. He is a name to keep an eye on as the Trade Deadline approaches.
3 – Not Singin’ the Blues
As of Monday afternoon, St. Louis forward Jordan Kyrou was on pace for 34 goals and 36 assists, and that would be his third straight season of at least 30 goals and 30 assists. He also had 27 goals and 48 assists in 74 games in 2021-22, so technically his fourth straight season with an 82-game pace of at least 30 goals and 30 assists.
When looking at Kyrou’s rate of high-danger assists at 5-on-5 and total scoring chance assists at 5-on-5 this season, two interesting names came up as comparables:
He obviously isn’t Connor McDavid, but Andrei Svechnikov is a curious name here. Svechnikov is a much more physical player, but he’s already had two seasons where he paced for a 30-30 campaign. He is off that pace this season, but there is clearly hope for improvement along the way. Regardless, it is another very productive season for Kyrou as he’s turned into one of the most consistent scoring wingers in the league.
4 – Killer Lightning
Both Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli were named to Canada’s Four Nations Cup roster. Hagel seemed a near-lock, but Cirelli may have been a bit more of a surprise. He has been a point-per-game player this season, though, and is stellar defensively. On top of that, he and Hagel have formed an excellent penalty-killing duo for Tampa Bay as the team allows 65% more goals against at 4-on-5 when they’re off the ice for the PK as compared to when they’re on the ice over the last season and a half:
Being able to successfully kill penalties against a high-octane American roster will be key for Canada at the Four Nations tournament, and it seems likely that Hagel and Cirelli will be an important part of that.
5 – Matty Ice
Seattle is 1-1-1 in their last three games, all home games, but those games were against Florida, Boston, and Tampa Bay. What is curious is that the team switched their shutdown line away from Chandler Stephenson’s line and to Matty Beniers’s line for those games. Beniers was only on the ice for two goals against at 5-on-5 matched up against the Aleksander Barkov, David Pastrňák, and Nikita Kucherov.
In fact, since the start of the 2022-23 season, Beniers has managed very good goals for/against rates relative to his team. Here are some names he compares to across the league:
Beniers is still finding his footing offensively, but he’s shown very good defensive ability for a young player. He just turned 22 years old in November, so maybe he will round out the offensive side of his game in the next few years. The building blocks for a great two-way player are definitely there.
6 – Ghosting the Opposition
There is a lot of chatter about rookies this year with the seasons Matvei Michkov and Lane Hutson are having. In Detroit, though, there’s a rookie forward who has been tremendous defensively to the point where every single one of his line mates are better defensively at 5-on-5 with him on the ice than when he’s not:
As with Beniers, there hasn’t been much offence for Kasper, but he’s also spent almost no time with Dylan Larkin and has instead had to carry second- and third-liners from Detroit – let’s be honest, they don’t have much offensive depth. Regardless, the defensive ability will keep Kasper in the lineup and allow him to hone his offensive game.
7 – Kiss the Kesselring
On the season, Utah defenceman Michael Kesselring has 15 points in 30 games and just one of those points has been on the power play. Going back to last season, Kesselring’s even strength points rate, broken down to goal and assist rates, have been similar to some top-pair defencemen across the league:
Kesselring has improved his defensive expected goals against metrics from last season, too, so there is more than just good offensive production to boast about. He is rounding into a nice second-pair blue liner for a team that desperately needed that kind of breakthrough player.
8 – Vegas (Mc)Nabbed a Good One
Last month, Vegas extended the contract of defenceman Brayden McNabb for three more seasons at $3.65M per season. Very quietly, since the start of the 2022-23 season, McNabb’s even strength goals for/against per 60 minutes differential, and the same for expected goals for/against, compares favourably to a couple top-pair veterans elsewhere:
McNabb has been outstanding again this season as he’s been Vegas’s best defensive defenceman. He turns 34 years old in January, so there is always concern of an age-related decline on the horizon, but he’s earned the extension and has been an anchor on the blue line for one of the best teams of the last decade.
9 – Move(rare) Bitch
As of Monday afternoon, the Los Angeles Kings had the lowest rates of shots, expected goals, and goals against in the league. A team doesn’t reach that level without contributions across the roster, and that includes their third defence pair.
On November 16th, the Kings put together a third pair of Jacob Moverare and Jordan Spence. In the month since, the Kings have a 61.9% expected goal share at 5-on-5 with the duo on the ice, outscoring the opposition 5-3. This is what it looks like visually:
Spence struggled to start the season, but he leads Kings defencemen by shot attempt share and expected goal share at 5-on-5 in those 12 games in the last month, and the team has outscored the opposition 9-3 with him on the ice. If that third pair can stay successful, it turns what was one of the weaknesses of this team into a strength.
10 – Bad Depth Perception
The 2023-24 Vancouver Canucks got a lot of positive contributions from their forward depth as the team outscored the opposition 69-59 at 5-on-5 with the trio of Elias Pettersson, JT Miller, and Brock Boeser off the ice, and posted a 53.4% expected goal share.
That has not been the case for the 2024-25 Vancouver Canucks. The are still outscoring the opposition with those three and Jake DeBrusk off the ice (30-29) but the expected goal share is down to 46.9%:
Offensively, the team is shooting 11.8% at 5-on-5 with those four forwards off the ice; the league average is about 8.8% and last season’s Vancouver depth shot 8.6%. Injuries have forced players into bigger roles and cut into the forward depth, but everyone is healthy now, so we should keep an eye on how the third and fourth lines fare from here on out. Being able to reliably out-play the opposition with them on the ice was a luxury they had last year that has yet to show itself in 2024-25.
Until next week.
