After the 2019-2020 NHL season was suspended due to COVID-19, I wanted to take a closer look at the league’s top performers based on their stats in the past four seasons.
Connor McDavid sits in about the middle for games played and leads everyone with over 400 points. Nikita Kucherov is next with close to 400 points and Auston Mathews is last as the only player under 300.
Diving deeper into goals and assists, it’s clear Ovechkin blew everyone out with 175 goals with Mathews came in second with over 150 goals. Artemi Panarin had the least amount at 117.
McDavid led everyone in assists with over 250 with Kucherov behind him at 239. Mathews came in last with 124 assists, only five less than Ovechkin’s 129, which could mean that Mathews and Ovechkin are more selfish players with the least number of assists while leading all 10 players in goals.
Here’s how many of their goals and overall points came on the man advantage:
Sidney Crosby scored most of his goals on the power play having the smallest differential between his goals that game on the power play versus his total goals with Panarin in second. Mathews had the largest differential when comparing his power play-goals versus his total number of goals.
But when it comes to which player has the smallest differential between points recorded on the power play versus total amount of points compiled over the last four seasons, that would be Mathews and Ovechkin with McDavid having the largest differential.
Moving on to shot percentage:
Here, Leon Draisaitl and Brad Marchand have the smallest difference between how many of their shots go in the net and how many don’t, which leaves their shot percentages to be the highest among the 10 skaters. Mackinnon, Kane and Ovechkin have the highest difference and only Ovechkin scored more than Draisaitl and Marchand.
When visiting the plotly, you will see the shooting percentage graph above and be able to hover over each point and see each player, who they play for, how old they are, how many goals they have, the amount of shots they have taken and and their exact shooting percentage since the 2016-2017 season until now.
Here’s which one of these All Stars the team can count on most in clutch situations:
Marchand is someone the Boston Bruins can definitely lean on for a clutch performance when in tight situations, tying Draisaitl in overtime goals scored and leading the way in game winning goals. Along with Marchand, McDavid and Kucherov have proved to be that guy for their respective teams as well, averaging over a point per game. Ovechkin averages just barely under 1, the least amount of points per game, behind Matthews 1.07 points per game.
The last aspect of the game, and maybe most important, is discipline. When looking at how disciplined is a hockey player, we look at their plus/minus and penalty minutes: Plus/minus is how many times the player is on the ice when their team scores (plus) versus how many times the player is on the ice when the opposing team scores (minus).
While Marchand is reliable in clutch moments and is second behind Panarin when it comes to plus/minus, he has spent a ridiculous amount of time in the box, serving a total of 310 penalty minutes, 136 more minutes than the second-most penalty minute holder, Kucherov, leaving me to assume Marchand has little discipline. This wasn’t a surprise by watching the way he plays and being one of the leagues most hated player. But if Marchand spends less time in the box and more time on the ice, there’s no saying how much his numbers could increase.
Kane and Draisaitl are the only two players in the minus with Kane being -1 and Draisaitl -7. I found this surprising because both Kane and Draisaitl are a third and fourth in most points but are a minus category.
