Merry Christmas to all you folks who celebrate this wonderful holiday! In this week’s installment, I share a few quick notes about how some lines in the Western Conference have been performing this season. Using Dobber’s Line Production Tool, we compared even-strength point production around the league. ‘Time on ice’ represents how many minutes each trio has played as a line this season. The actual TOI values in minutes were retrieved from Natural Stat Trick. Last week, I compiled a list of the highest scoring line for each team at even strength. Here’s the list…

Gabriel Landeskog – Nathan MacKinnon – Mikko Rantanen

Mikko Rantanen has 59 points. He has 59 points and we’re not even halfway through the season. Can we just take a second to appreciate how insane that is? Some players don’t even tally 59 points over a full 82 games. Rantanen is on pace for 131 points, which would be the highest regular season total since Mario Lemieux put up 161 in 1995-1996. By no means am I saying Rantanen is going to finish the season with 131 points, but it’s not like his current shooting percentage is terribly unsustainable. This year he’s scoring on 16.8% of his shots, last year he was scoring on 16.3% of his shots. However, if I was an owner of Gabriel Landeskog, I’d probably be selling high. Landeskog’s current shooting percentage of 21.4% is considerably higher than what he’s put up in the past.

Johnny Gaudreau – Sean Monahan – Elias Lindholm

Last season Sean Monahan was playing injured. He was pretty dang far from 100%. “It was a grind, I was freezing my hand every game. Mentally, it wears on you. I am happy to get this taken care of. I felt like was playing with one hand for a while. I lost all my grip strength in my hand. It definitely limits you.” Knowing how much his wrist limited him, it’s even more remarkable that he also had procedures for hernias and his groin during the offseason. Despite all those ailments, he managed 64 points in 74 games last season.  And it’s for that reason, I’m not surprised he currently has 40 points in 37 games – an 89-point pace. Now that he’s healthy, I expect Monahan to finish the season as a point-per-game player for the first time in his career.

Jamie Benn – Tyler Seguin – Alexander Radulov

As you probably know, this line was a pretty successful one last season, so let’s see how their numbers from this year compare. Benn-Seguin-Radulov were responsible for 53% of shots taken while on the ice last season, a number which sits at 56% so far this season. They’re also creating more scoring chances than their opponents – by a larger margin than the 2017-2018 campaign. Last season, they outscored the opposition 49-33, this season they’re currently outscoring opponents by a score of 21-13.

Nikolaj Ehlers – Mark Scheifele – Blake Wheeler

Mark Scheifele and Blake Wheeler are probably one of the best duos in the league, but I feel like they aren’t in that conversation enough. Both are among the top-10 in league scoring, Scheifele with 49 points in 36 games, Wheeler with 48 points in 36 games. An interesting note about this trio – despite allowing more high-danger scoring chances that they’ve created (59 for vs. 62 against), they’ve capitalized on 12 of those opportunities, and conceded on just three occasions.

Timo Meier – Logan Couture – Tomas Hertl

Amidst his second full season with the Sharks, Timo Meier is starting to show why he was drafted ninth overall in 2015. He has 34 points in 35 games and is on pace for 278 shots this season. While Meier should have no trouble cracking 60 points this season, I’m afraid his ceiling isn’t as high as it could be because of limited ice-time – both on the power-play and at even-strength. In future seasons when those numbers go up, his production should too. The fact that Meier-Couture-Hertl make up San Jose’s highest scoring line is made even more impressive by the fact that they start just 47% of their shifts in the offensive zone.

Jason Zucker – Eric Staal – Mikael Granlund

The advanced stats seem to like this line. Not only do they control 56% of shots taken while they’re on the ice, they also create 61% of scoring chances. However, the most impressive stat is how heavily they’ve dominated opponents in terms of high-danger opportunities. They have 75 for and only 32 against.

Filip Forsberg – Ryan Johansen – Viktor Arvidsson

Filip Forsberg is one of a few players in the league who can threaten the 40-goal barrier. Despite missing 11 games (and counting) with an injury, he still leads the team with 14 goals. Considering Arvidsson has also been injured for a large chunk of the season, this line hasn’t really had enough of an opportunity to show the league how dominant they are. Through the 13 games they did play as a trio, Forsberg-Johansen-Arvidsson have outshot (58% of shots), out-chanced (59% of scoring chances) and have been more dangerous (68% of high-danger scoring chances) than the opposition. Watch out for this line when Forsberg and Arvidsson are healthy!