Looks who’s got 40.
Patrik Laine’s 40th goal of the season and the last 6 minutes of the game yesterday were about the only good things for the Winnipeg Jets yesterday in their 2-1 loss to the Flyers. Pick your reasons for the lack of a win by the Jets, there’s many, but look at the game this way; they needed some rest.
The Jets were tired, they did not have their legs moving nor did they have any semblance of cohesion when executing anything. Again, look at the legs- they weren’t there. Now before the critics come out and blast that idea because ‘these guys are professionals, they are paid to skate’, think if it this way: the Flyers should have won that game by the mid second period and held on to win by a goal. Those games are going to happen.
So move along and hope they get some rest before Washington tomorrow night. Hopefully the coach sees this and let’s them get away from the ice to take it easy, visit a museum or see the White House.
Speaking of museums will Patrik Laine have a standing exhibition all by himself in one eventually? He is now one goal ahead of Crosby on the all-time list scored by teenagers in the NHL and he’s closing in on third fast to fall behind former Jets great Dale Hawerchuk. Since the start of the 2016-17 season no one in the NHL has scored more goals than Laine has with his 76. (Just for reference that’s what Selanne scored in his rookie season!)
But again these goals are scored in different eras. How does Laine fit into that? It looks like this:
Thanks to the great website Hockey Reference we can look at how players compare through the ages. There’s no need to do a lengthy explanation because you can click this link you can read how this is done.
While this should not be fully conclusive as to predict future performance *cough Jimmy Carson cough* what it does suggest is that Patrik Laine is showing reason that he could be one of the greatest goal scorers ever if he continues this trajectory.
Now consider what Laine does on the ice that is allowing this torrid pace of scoring, it’s not unconventional but his game is changing. Thanks to the very talented Micah Blake McCurdy and his website hockeyviz.com we can see some of Laine’s tendencies and changes.
This is 2016-17, Laine’s rookie season, below.
You can see where Laine was shooting from with the most frequency here based on the heat map. As a right shot he was coming across at the goalie from the high slot. He seemed to have a favourite or preferred angle and position but that seems to have changed this season.
While the visualization is different you can see that the shot locations are spread around in a far greater variety and wile there is still an emphasis on the right side the bulk are closer to the net within the slot. Laine is finding a position inside and his team mates are finding him there too.
Here is Laine on the power play. One does not need a chart to see where the league’s leading power play goal scorer is shooting form but it’s worth noting.
Again, it resembles last season but with a bit more variety.
The other interesting element to consider is the success with which Laine is scoring. Here’s where he rates as a teenager with his shooting percentage.
What stands out on the list above is that there are only 3 other players in the 2000s that are on that list of 27. So when looking at a bigger and more broader list and trying to understand how Laine could fit in based on his 19% shooting success. It looks like this list, one that is too long to post. In this query I took any year, age and made the minimum games played 500 or more to try and get some picture on players who had a long enough career and how they shot the puck.
On that list in the first 200 players there are only 7 players who had a shooting percentage above 14% and played 500 or more career games who started after 2000. That in itself says how much more difficult scoring has become and how hard it is to sustain a high shooting percentage. Even the great Alex Ovechkin is not in that group and he can be argued to be one of the top scorers of all-time given era adjustments. His career shooting percentage is 12.3% which is still way above historical league average.
With that being said there’s no guarantee what Patrik Laine will do given this season and beyond but right now, as a 19 year old he’s doing something that has not really been done before. When adjusted for era and then factoring in the goaltending from Jimmy Carson’s first two seasons to now it’s fairly obvious that Laine is unique in his ability. Will teams close him out- yes. Will they give him trouble to prevent that shot- yes. However, if in one of those 5 attempts that makes up his near 20% success, he gets a clean look at the net from the high slot or lower that puck is going past the goalie and no one has done it like he has at this age…ever.
What happens in the future is certainly not guaranteed but there is every reason to be optimistic that he will be something that the NHL has not seen in a very long time, if ever, simply because of the era he’s doing it in.