Welcome to Part 3 of our four-part series looking back at the most valuable players at each position. We started with centermen, last week we hit left wings, and now we are on to right wings. I think you probably get the gist by now, but we are comparing draft data to player's end-of-year stats to get an idea of how well they have lived up to their average draft ranking (ADP). To be a valuable player in this context, a player needs to outperform their ADP. 

The ADPs are based off of draft rankings across several sites and averaged. Please find our top five right wings below.

	ADP Rank
Mitch Marner	12
Patrick Kane	13
Mikko Rantanen	14
Nikita Kucherov	17
David Pastrnak	27

Right wing was clearly lacking in a bit of fire power this year according to managers. There was a nice little run on right wings, but outside the top ten. Mitch Marner had the 12th highest ADP, and that was the highest of all the right wings. Just as a comparison for left wings, Artemi Panarin had the fifth-highest ADP Rank.

Next we have the same process as last week: we compare that rank to the player's year-long performance. We are taking Yahoo's standard calculation for points (six for a goal, four for an assist, etc.) and apply that to Frozen Tool's Big Board Report. In order to do this, we export the report, then add a little equation adding all of the values for each scoring category. That gives us a total points produced for all players, which we can then rank. We will use both rank and actuals in the column – but we will get to actuals in a minute.

First up, ranks. We aren't just looking at who ranked the highest in points, we are looking for the player who had the largest difference between his draft rank and his performance rank.

	ADP Rank	PTS Rank	Δ
Tyler Toffoli	255	32	223
Conor Garland	251	75	176
Phil Kessel	226	62	164
Cam Atkinson	225	74	151
Clayton Keller	235	88	147

This metric highlights those deeper players who are dramatically outperforming their rank (we will get to another way to look at it in a minute), so it helps to have been ranked poorly to start.

Tyler Toffoli clearly deserves some notice here, but I want to start with Conor Garland. Garland finished the season with a career high 65-point pace. He was a revelation to start the season with 22 points in his first 23 games (78-point full season pace), slowing down slightly over the second half with 17 points in his final 26 games (54-point full season pace). How did he do it? With the best deployment of his career. He averaged just shy of 18 minutes a night of total ice time, and just shy of three minutes of power-play time. Both career highs.

None of Garland's production screams unsustainable either. He put up a very pedestrian ten power-play points, his shooting percentage was below his career average, and his secondary assist rate was very low. All of these point to the potential for growth.

On the down side, a couple of metrics point to his teammates scoring a bit more often than expected with him on the ice – but not by much. He also saw declining power-play time over the course of the season, averaging only two minutes on the second unit by the end of the season. That is definitely a question mark going forward, though his point pace was not overtly reliably on power-play points.

Overall, Garland's profile suggests that not only was this pace essentially sustainable, but there is still room to grow, particularly on the power play.

And now the flip side – who was not worth the price?

	ADP Rank	PTS Rank	Δ
Nikita Kucherov	17	238	-221
Kailer Yamamoto	92	194	-102
Travis Konecny	61	110	-49
Alexander Radulov	197	227	-30
Blake Wheeler	31	57	-26

Nikita Kucherov is no surprise here. He was hurt for the entire season, and some leagues may have drafted before that news came to light. After that though there weren't a lot of terrible disappointments. Don't get me wrong – as a Travis Konecny owner, I was certainly hoping for more, but all of our top five left wings dropped at least 76 spots, and Konecny, as the third worst right wing, dropped only 49.

That does leave us with Kailer Yamamoto. Yamamoto teased in 2019-20 playing 27 games, mostly to finish the season, and putting up 26 points for a 79 full season pace. He did it playing with Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and mostly at even strength. He barely saw any power-play time, and as such only put up two power-play points. He did see a career average high time on ice, but also had an enormous and unsustainable shooting percentage.

Basically everything else screamed unsustainable for Yamamoto too. Still, managers had expectations, as he was ranked within the top 100. He failed those expectations dramatically. His 33-point pace is a far cry from what managers were hoping for. He lost about a minute of total time, and also somehow lost power-play time. He still saw quite a bit of his time with Draisaitl, but was not able to rekindle that magic. Things may have gone a little too poorly for Yamamoto, so he could see a bit of a rebound, but that isn't much of a comfort, as a bit better than a 33-point pace still isn't rosterable.

Now we move to a review of the data based on actual production versus ranked production. With the full season data, we can compare all players' draft position to their end-of-year points and produce a trend line. With this line we can take any draft position and get an "expected" number of points. A player's true points then will give us an idea of how much they performed above or below expected. This helps us look at those players who were drafted highly as well.

Here is our top five:

	Expected Pts	PTS	PTS Δ
Tyler Toffoli	184.1	394.2	210.1
Mikko Rantanen	377.6	531.3	153.7
Conor Garland	187.9	321.5	133.6
Patrick Kane	380.2	509.9	129.7
Phil Kessel	212.9	341.5	128.6

Some big guns make the list here with Mikko Rantanen and Patrick Kane outperforming their draft rank. Kane's season was relatively consistent to his 2019-20 numbers, though Rantanen did see an increase. He got more time on ice, shot more, scored more, and some of it looks sustainable. He might not hit a 104-point full season pace based on his current numbers, but things are still looking good.

I did want to spend a little time on Tyler Toffoli. Toffoli's first season in Montreal was a definite success. He saw a career high 69-point pace. That came with a career high total time on ice, power-play time, and one of his highest shots per game rates. He bounced around the lineup a bit, but spent the most time with Nick Suzuki (at even strength and on the power-play), which is a good place to be in Montreal.

The one red flag for Toffoli was his personal shooting percentage. His inflated percentage appears to account for around 11 goals – meaning if he had shot closer to his career average, he would have ended with a 50-55 full season pace, which is right about where he has been for his career. The hope would be that something in the Montreal system, or his deployment allows him to be a more effective shooter. We shall have to wait and see, though he did exceed his expected goals at five on five by almost nine goals so that isn't the most positive sign.

And now on to the disappointments.

	Expected Pts	PTS	PTS Δ
Nikita Kucherov	373.8	0	-373.8
Alexander Radulov	226.0	90.5	-135.5
Kailer Yamamoto	299.1	166.1	-133.0
Vladimir Tarasenko	197.5	134.5	-63.0
Evgenii Dadonov	249.9	188.1	-61.8

We already hit on Kucherov and Yamamoto. Alexander Radulov only played ten games so that impacted his overall rankings here (though he played at an 89-point pace for those ten games). We could spend some time with Evgenii Dadonov, but his decline seems pretty straightforward. Lost a lot of time on ice, decreased shot rates, and you know, not getting to play with Aleksander Barkov and/or Jonathan Huberdeau anymore. Could things have gone a little better for him? Sure. Worth spending a lot of time on? I say no.

Vladimir Tarasenko is an interesting discussion, though. He was hurt to start the season so that certainly contributes to his inclusion on this list, but also when he did come back, he… wasn't good. His 48-point pace was the lowest since his 2012-13 rookie season and a far cry from his usual 75 points.

He started 2019-20 with ten points in ten games, and in that very short stretch he had very low total ice time and power-play time. His 2021 numbers saw an increase from that, but are still a drop from what had been his usual deployment. In the four seasons prior, he was seeing more than 18:30 a night, but in 2021 he was down to 17:25. On the power play, he was seeing about three minutes a night, but in 2021 he was down to 2:34. His shot rate was also down a full shot per game to 2.7 in 2021. These are not encouraging signs.

On the potentially positive side, though, essentially all of his underlying numbers are low. His personal and teammates shooting percentages were pretty low, as was his point participation numbers. These imply that he and his linemates could be due to score a few more goals, and he should be getting in on more of them. The one caveat with his personal shooting percentage is that his expected goal numbers at even strength were right on the money. One implication could be that he wasn't taking particularly dangerous shots, and that is why his shooting percentage dropped – not random variance that should course correct.

I think the moral here is that Tarasenko shouldn't really be a 50-point player, but the drop in deployment and shot rates are worrying and if those don't rebound, he might not be a lock on a 75-point player either.

That is all for this week. Thanks for reading. Stay safe out there.

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