Bedard headlines eye-popping stats through first week of 2023-24 season

One of the things I spend a lot of time doing throughout the hockey season is picking through statistical databases, largely looking for outliers and trends. Often there’s nothing there, and the numbers bear out what I’d expect to see, but sometimes I come across a strange statistical nugget that warrants more digging.

For example, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who was just bought out by a non-playoff team (the Vancouver Canucks), is currently third in NHL time-on-ice per game for the defending Eastern Conference champion Florida Panthers.

If you look deeper, Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour are hurt, but it’s safe to say it still tells us something about what the Panthers believe they’ve picked up from the Canucks “discard” pile.

On the other hand, Mackenzie Entwistle is currently tied with Zach Hyman in “rebound chances per game.” With some further assessment (he’s only played one game), it's a lot less likely there’s anything to be learned there.

In the first week of the season, just about every stat category contains some oddities, so I spend a lot of time wondering “Is this something, or nothing?” Below are some of those nuggets I’ve come across after the first week of NHL hockey. I’ll lay them out (primarily about Canadian teams), and you can decide if you think it’s the start of a trend or just some random early-season one-offs.

Thanks to Sportradar and SportLogiq for the below

*****

In no particular order…

Two Canadian teams have been playing with the youngest D-corps in the league, and they have very different aspirations this season:

Ottawa Senators – 25 years, 173 days

Montreal Canadiens – 25 years, 180 days

The other three teams with an average age under 26 are Anaheim, the NY Rangers, and Columbus.

That’s pretty unusual for a team with playoff aspirations like Ottawa and New York. I don’t think it’s out there to suggest this could lead to inconsistent results, high highs and low lows for those teams.

Related to this: Which teams have had the most players aged 25 and under dress this season?

Well, it’s a bunch of non-playoff teams, but for the Buffalo Sabres who have real playoff aspirations, inconsistency could be a story there too:

Buffalo: 12

Columbus: 12

Philadelphia: 11

Montreal: 11

Chicago: 11

The fewest is the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have dressed just two players 25 or under, followed by Colorado with three. Other Canadian teams:

Ottawa: 9

Vancouver: 6

Calgary: 5

Edmonton: 5

Toronto: 5

Winnipeg: 5

***

The Canucks may be 2-1, but they’ve still given up a great deal against. This week Demko had a period where he had to make 22 saves, just the fourth period he’s had to make 20+ saves in his career. We’ll see if that was a blip, or a Canucks trend (because while poor defence isn’t good, great Demko would go a long way for their playoff hopes).

*****

Auston Matthews has now scored on 88 different goalies, which shockingly, is only tied for fifth in the NHL since 2016-17. The others: Dylan Larkin, who also has 88, Nathan MacKinnon (89), Alex Ovechkin (90), Leon Draisaitl (96) and David Pastrnak (97).

*****

Connor McDavid hit 550 assists, making him the fifth-fastest player to get there in NHL history (572 games), passing Peter Forsberg, who needed 595 games.

The others: Bobby Orr (565), Peter Stastny (564), Mario Lemieux (483), Wayne Gretzky (386).

Some Gretzky stats are Tiger Woods-ian, where his numbers just demolish that of other greats.

***

Random tidbit: Sheldon Keefe has the highest percentage of correct challenges in NHL history, with a minimum of 10. The list:

Sheldon Keefe: 93.8% (15 correct, 1 wrong)

Jay Woodcroft: 87.5%

Jim Montgomery: 75%

Jeremy Colliton: 70%

D.J. Smith: 69.9%

***

The Oilers scored four in a period against Nashville on Tuesday night. They accomplished that feat 10 times the year before, but bad news for the teams they did it against: all of them save for the Rangers and Kraken missed playoffs. Not a great sign for the Predators, methinks.

***

There’s been a lot made of the Leafs adding Ryan Reaves this off-season, and his impact has been felt in the few games he’s played. In theory. In reality, he’s not playing much hockey (8:05 per game). Of the 619 guys to dress so far this year, he’s 605^th in ice time per game, and only ahead of four players who’ve dressed every game for their teams, Brendan Lemieux (the lowest at 6:25), Mark Kastelic, Klim Kostin and Steven Lorentz.

A couple of fights obviously dent the number a little, but he’s still been used sparingly by coach Sheldon Keefe thus far.

***

Some fun with expected goals below.

Take a look at the teams who’ve been creating the most “expected goals” so far, it’s kind of a shocker. All totals are on a “per game” basis, via SportLogiq.

The top five:

Detroit (4.01)

Chicago (3.95)

New Jersey (3.91)

Philadelphia (3.90)

Colorado (3.86)

(Toronto is sixth, 3.83)

New Jersey and the Avs, sure. But some non-playoff teams from last year are creating far more offence so far this season.

The five teams who are giving up the most:

San Jose (4.11)

Montreal (3.91)

Vancouver (3.81)

Columbus (3.78)

Minnesota (3.70)

(Chicago is sixth worst, 3.67)

Vancouver and Minnesota stand out as teams with higher expectations than “bottom five defensively.”

Best defensive teams this year, by expected goals against:

NY Islanders (1.41)

Ottawa (2.05)

Colorado (2.24)

Philadelphia (2.31)

Vegas (2.33)

This is why I spend time on “Is that a blip, or a trend? Ottawa and Philly as defensive stalwarts? The Islanders, Colorado, Vegas, sure. But Ottawa and Philly?

And who’s creating the least offence? At least one shocker here:

Buffalo (1.77)

San Jose (1.82)

Columbus (2.21)

Minnesota (2.27)

Seattle (2.29)

I know Seattle showed they could produce offence in the past, but they shocked me less than seeing the Sabres as the worst team at creating expected goals in the league to date.

And finally, here are the teams who’ve been the “luckiest,” producing the most actual goals per game compared to what would be expected. The numbers shown are “surplus goals per game” to date:

Carolina (1.64)

Minnesota (1.40)

Ottawa (1.09)

Vancouver (1.06)

Los Angeles (0.81)

And the “unluckiest,” those who will score more if they play the same way, in theory:

Nashville (-1.58)

Seattle (-1.54)

Dallas (-1.45)

St. Louis (-1.39)

Washington (-1.31)

Seattle stands out to me there. No wins through four games, but they should start to see more pucks go in soon.

***

And now, for the Connor Bedard block.

The totals below are actual totals, not per game, but I thought I’d leave them whole so you could see how he’s stacking things up early. He may only have three points, but my lord is he involved in everything offensively.

Check out his company on the following lists…

Shots:

MacKinnon: 24

Bedard: 22

Eichel: 21

Matthews: 19

Draisaitl: 18

Slot shots:

Matthews 16

Bedard: 14

Larkin: 11

Eichel: 11

Tavares: 10

Rush Chances:

Bedard: 7

Forsberg: 6

Eichel: 6

Hughes: 6

Monahan 5

Cycle Chances:

OReilly: 10

Bedard: 10

Point: 9

Matthews: 9

Kucherov: 9

Draisaitl: 9

Forecheck Chances:

Matthews: 7

Boeser: 6

Point: 4

Bedard: 4

Kuznetsov: 3

Rebound Chances:

Copp: 4

Bedard: 3

Forsberg: 3

Hyman: 3

Glass: 3

The kid just has the puck all night. He’s tied for 10^th in the league in offensive possession time per game (1:08) behind the most skilled players in the league, names like Jack Hughes, McDavid, MacKinnon, Nylander and Rantanen (Panarin leads by a second over Hughes at 1:24 per game).

SportLogiq has him fifth in the league in offence-generating plays per 20 minutes, just behind McDavid, Hughes, Malkin and MacKinnon, and just ahead of Matthews.

The curious trend to note from all this: despite those rankings, he’s just inside the top-10 in total expected goals, and not on the list when it comes to expected goals per game.

That could be because despite all that, he’s only been a part of five inner slot shots through four games, which gives us a clue: he’s creating as much as he can without getting looks from the most dangerous part of the rink. It’s a hard thing to do for younger (and smaller) players, so we’ll be tracking to see if he’s better able to get there as he makes his adjustments to the NHL. There’s enough with this kid though to say with extreme confidence, what we’ve got here is “something.”