Sustainable or not? Auditing the top individual performances of the young NHL season

Welcome to on-pace season. It’s that fun time in the NHL calendar when the sample sizes are just big enough to be interesting and just small enough to produce some staggering pro-rated stats. With every team through, give or take, a dozen games of the 2023-24 season, we can start building those on-pace charts and graphics without being laughed out of the room. Why not? It’s fun when players post jaw-dropping numbers early on.

Is Quinn Hughes turning into Bobby Orr before our eyes? Will Auston Matthews make a run at the single-season goal record? Let’s delve into the most incredible starts so far this season and whether we can expect them to continue.

NOT A CHANCE

Frank Vatrano, Rocket Richard challenger

When a man’s career high is 38 goals, you have to take any hot start with a grain of – hang on, I’m being told Vatrano’s 38 goals came with the Boston Jr. Bruins when he was 16 years old. That’s right – Vatrano has never scored 40 at any level of documented high-level hockey, let alone the peak level. As an NHLer, he’s topped out at 24 goals as a career high. Yet here he is, in season 9 of his career, already with nine goals through 12 games, on pace for 62. How?

The first place we look, of course, is the shooting percentage. It sits at 22.1, almost double his career average of 10.6. So the regression will come soon. Heck, it might be here already, as Vatrano scored nine times in his first nine games and has since gone three games without a goal. That said: Vatrano has an excellent chance to smash his career high in goals this season. He has always been an efficient scorer. Across the first eight seasons of his career, he scored 21 goals per 82 games despite playing just 14:09 per night. This season, he’s averaging 18:27, by far the most TOI of his career, so it’s no surprise to see him generating a career-best 3.33 shots per game. We’ll see if Alex Killorn’s return from injury shrinks Vatrano’s ice time, but he has a real shot at 30 this season. That said, he obviously won’t sniff the league lead. Let’s get real.

WELL, NO, BUT ALSO YES

Artemi Panarin goes Benjamin Button

Most hockey players not named Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby age like relatively normal humans. What we saw in Panarin’s statistical profile over the past few years made perfect sense; it just looked like someone aging out of his prime and into useful seasons of veteran-grade production. From the Bread Man’s scintillating debut season on Broadway in 2019-20 through the end of 2022-23, his 5-on-5 points per 60 declined every year. Last season, his fourth as a Ranger, included his fewest scoring chances per 60 of his career. That was acceptable given he was entering his age-32 season.

But here is now, freshly shorn head, shot out of a cannon for seven goals and 20 points in his first 12 games. Panarin is a true Hart Trophy candidate early on. His playmaking numbers look like something out of his mid-prime, and his shooting and goal-scoring rates are otherworldly, easily the highest of his career.

He can’t sustain that, right? He has typically profiled as a nifty playmaker far more than a sniper, never exceeding 32 goals. But he’s not relying on puck luck in his case. He has scored on 15.9 percent of his shots – and he has always been an accurate shooter, converting at better than 14 percent for his career. By pretty much every metric imaginable, Panarin is earning all these extra goals, getting to high-danger scoring areas and generating chances like never before.

Even if he slows down as a result of the typical wear and tear of the NHL schedule, it’s not inconceivable that Panarin defies the odds and delivers his first 100-point season at 32.

Auston Matthews, goal-per-game god

It takes a lot for Matthews to surprise us nowadays. He is the most prolifically dominant goal scorer of his generation, taking the torch from Ovechkin. Among players with at least 400 career games, Matthews trails only Mike Bossy and Mario Lemieux in goals per game. Matthews’ 60 goals in 73 games in 2021-22 amounted to 0.82 goals per game, the highest single-season mark since 1995-96.

Yet somehow, Matthews has found a way to exceed expectations this season, using his peerlessly deadly release to bury 13 goals in 13 games. It’s not like we can predict massive regression for the world’s best goal-scorer, who is the favorite to lead the league in snipes any year in which he’s healthy. But can he really continue scoring at an 82-goal pace? What’s a realistic finishing number for him in 2023-24 if he plays a full season or close to it?

It’s a matter of whether he’s showing anything different in his profile. The shooting percentage is way up at 22.4 percent, so that explains it a little. But he converts on a healthy 15.9 percent of his shots for his career. He’s also third in the league in scoring chances and second individual expected goals. So while his puck luck should regress slightly…there’s no one in the league pelting opposing goalies with more high-quality chances. Maybe he doesn’t keep up his current pace and score 80-plus, but he could “regress” at this point and end up with 70 if he can keep his games played total north of 75.

THE VANCOUVER CANUCKS CATEGORY

Can Quinn Hughes, Brock Boeser and Thatcher Demko keep it up?

Wow. What a story the Vancouver Canucks have been. I actually picked them to make the playoffs this season on account of the defensive gains they made late last season under Rick Tocchet and via GM Patrik Allvin’s offseason roster tweaks. But while the Canucks have looked like a playoff team so far this season, it’s, their offensive numbers grabbing the headlines.

We’ll set aside NHL second-leading scorer Elias Pettersson for a moment. He eclipsed 100 points last year, so it wasn’t that big of a leap to get him this high up the mountain.

Hughes was somehow underrated entering this season, having become the fastest blue-liner ever to 200 career assists, but he has gone absolutely supernova to open 2023-24. Hughes has joined Bobby Orr as the only two blue-liners to record 20 points and a plus-15 rating or better over their first 12 games of a season.

So are we about to witness another 100-point season from a defenseman, a year after Erik Karlsson became the first in 29 years to deliver one? Hmm. We might want to pump the brakes. The Vancouver Canucks are shooting a league-best 15.43 percent, a hilariously unsustainable number. That’s NBA Jam “He’s on fire!” level ridiculous. Hughes is scoring on more than 11 percent of his shots, a success rate befitting a forward. So with the Canucks all likely to regress as a team in terms of their torrid pace, maybe we set the bar at 85 to 90 points for Hughes, which would still be outstanding. And to be clear: while puck luck has helped, Hughes has been unbelievably and legitimately good this season, and that should continue. He would run away with the Norris Trophy and even earn Hart consideration if the season ended today.

Back to that puck luck, though. Not so fast, Mr. Boeser, who has 10 goals in 12 games and is already more than halfway to his total from last season. Boeser does possess a laser of a shot, but that doesn’t explain his silly 28.6 percent success rate this season. He’s actually generating the fewest shots and high-danger chances per 60 of his career this season. The overall expected goal numbers are in line with his career norms. So in his case, the numbers look bogus under the hood. (Fantasy owners: sell high. Now.)

What about goaltender Thatcher Demko, who is 7-2 with a 1.61 goals-against average and .948 save percentage so far? It’s a continuation of his sparkling finish to 2022-23, in which he went 11-4-1 with a .918 SV% post-injury and post-Tocchet. Demko obviously won’t finish with a .948 SV%, but he very well could deliver a Vezina-worthy season. Among 35 goalies with at least 250 minutes played at 5-on-5 this season, Demko leads the league in goals saved above average per 60 minutes. That tells us he’s dialed in and outplaying every other goalie in the league right now. On the downside: among that sample of 35 netminders, he carries the 10^th-highest expected goals against per 60, a reflection of the fact Vancouver’s defense isn’t where it needs to be. They sit in the bottom third of the league in scoring chances against per 60 at 5-on-5.

So if Demko is to keep up his incredible play, it will mean doing so in spite of a difficult workload. That can be done – Connor Hellebuyck has excelled seeing tons of rubber his whole career, and Igor Shesterkin won the Vezina in 2021-22 under similar conditions – but it also means Demko’s numbers could regress if his play slips even a little.

On the whole: The Canucks are better than last year’s team for sure. They are also a bit lucky. Think playoffs-good in the end rather than Presidents’ Trophy-good.

Advanced stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick