NHL Awards season, or the announcements of NHL Awards season, is in full swing and yesterday was the Lady Byng's turn. I am still not sure why the hubbub for an award for players that don't take penalties when all broadcasters talk about is needing toughness or snarl or [insert punch-y adjective here], but this is the NHL where very little makes sense anyway. Your finalists:

Kyle Connor (@NHLJets), Jaccob Slavin (@Canes) and Jared Spurgeon (@mnwild) are the three finalists for the 2021-22 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy. #NHLAwards#NHLStats: https://t.co/ouv2SEMXzF pic.twitter.com/nASh9xKu2Q

— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) May 18, 2022

No arguments here. It's not an award worth arguing about.

*

A couple days ago, Brad Marchand intimated he may have offseason surgery but that's where the story ended. We got a bit of clarification on this:

Marchand may have offseason hip surgery. Still exploring options.

— matt porter (@mattyports) May 18, 2022

Hip surgeries are great for the player but for fantasy, we need to be cautious here. We'll wait to see what this develops into.

*

We had a great goaltending duel to start off the Rangers-Hurricane series. With under three minutes left in the third period, Sebastian Aho scored off his own rebound to tie the game 1-1, and both goalies had made some 10-bell saves to that point. Igor Shesterkin and Antti Raanta had saved 48 of 49 shots combined, until Aho got that rebound off a rush. That would push us to over time.

Ian Cole served as the hero just minutes into the extra frame, with a turnaround floater that looked deflected:

Ian Cole for the win in overtime. Hurricanes take Game 1 pic.twitter.com/VRmbozgtcn

— Shayna (@hayyyshayyy) May 19, 2022

It was kind of deserved for Carolina. New York had a very strong first two periods but the Hurricanes took over completely in the last 20 or so minutes of the contest. Had the Rangers capitalized on some earlier chances, they would have had this Game 1 wrapped up.

Filip Chytil tallied New York's first goal seven minutes into the game in what was a great game for the Kid Line. The trio of Chytil-Lafrenière-Kakko looked as dangerous as they have all playoffs, and their play would be a tide-turner if they can create dangerous chances, every game, regularly.

*

Just before the playoffs began, I wrote a Twitter thread outlining why Evan Rodrigues was a major key to the Penguins going on a deep run. He had a great start to the 2021-22 season, then his production cratered over the final 30-40 games, before coming alive again in the postseason. He had 5 points in 7 tilts in their series with the Rangers and would probably still be playing hockey if the Penguins weren't forced to go with their AHL goalie for 5+ of the 7 games.

Rodrigues is a pending UFA and with new Pittsburgh management, it is not a lock that he returns. It is worth looking at his season, breaking it down by segments, whether this is sustainable, and what he could bring to a new team. Most of the data is from Natural Stat Trick and our own Frozen Tools.

Let's dispel a myth: his early-season production – 15 goals and 30 points in 33 games – was not a product of playing with Sidney Crosby. He played less than 40% of his 5-on-5 ice time in that span with the Penguins captain, and the team scored considerably less with the two of them on the ice (2.74 goals per 60 minutes) than when Rodrigues was playing anywhere else in the lineup (3.24 goals/60). In fact, from Hockey Reference, Crosby only assisted on two (2) Rodrigues goals all season, and both came on the power play. One of his most-common line mates in that early portion of the campaign was Kasperi Kapanen, and with the two of them on the ice (over 220 minutes), the team controlled 60.8% of the expected goals and scored 3.5 goals per 60 minutes. Kapanen had more assists (3) on Rodrigues goals than Crosby did.

With that myth out of the way, let's get to his actual play. One way to see how effective a player was over the course of the season is to see if they elevated the game of their line mates. To check that, we go to Hockey Viz, and look at their with-without spider charts. Nearly every player – from Crosby to Guentzel to Letang to Kapanen to Zucker and so on – generated more (and in many cases, considerably more) expected goals for the Penguins when they played with Rodrigues than without him:

Many of them were also better off defensively, too. Now, we can argue about zone starts or line matching or whatever, but then things are getting a bit convoluted. The simple fact is that Rodrigues made his line mates better almost across the board, at least offensively at 5-on-5.

So, we have a player that wasn't really a producer at any point of his career suddenly breaking out. Why did he break out? There are a number of reasons. We are going to start with his shot selection.

Since becoming a full-time-ish player in 2016-17, Rodrigues had never had a season where he generated more than 0.71 individual expected goals (iXG) per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. His full 2021-22 season saw a career-high 0.88 ixG/60, but we have to break that down further.

It is no secret that E-Rod went through a slump after his early burst; just 4 goals and 13 points over his final 49 games.  But again, we have to break this down. From January 7^th (the end of his hot streak) through to the end of March, a span of 36 games, his ixG/60 cratered to 0.58 ixG/60, a rate not far off his 2021 mark, and closer to what he did in his Buffalo years. In other words, there was a reason why he shot 2.3% for 36 games, and it wasn't all just bad luck. But this is where things get interesting: he scored 2 goals in 13 games to finish the season, shooting just 4.8%. Not good by any means, but his ixG/60 exploded back up to a whopping 1.41 ixG/60. He just had a real problem finishing, despite, league-wide, trailing only Auston Matthews and Troy Terry in individual expected goals.

Even though the 28-year-old had a brutal final 49 games by production, it doesn't tell the whole story. There was a large chunk in there where his production fell off because he had stopped generating good, quality shots, but then there was a smaller chunk where his production fell off even though he was generating a lot of good, quality shots. That is what gives us hope moving forward; he had a bad 36 games, but an excellent 46 games besides that, even if he wasn't scoring at will like he did through the first three months.

This is where we note there's a good chance he's just not a good shooter. HockeyViz has his finishing impact at roughly -5%, which puts him near the bottom of the league in this regard. He has had good seasons, at times, but he has never cracked the 75^th percentile. Generating a lot of quality shots is one thing, finishing them is something else.

We can look at this visually, again thanks to HockeyViz, by seeing how many expected goals he generated, and how many he actually finished:

That is 17 goals against 23.3 expected goals (two goals were empty-net tallies and are not counted here). It is not great, nor is it good or even average. For reference, Kirill Kaprizov scored 45 goals against just 28.9 expected, while Alex DeBrincat scored 38 against 31.7 expected. The top-end goal scorers just don't finish at a rate considerably lower than what they're expected to. Even in 2021, E-Rod's best quasi-full season by finishing ability, he scored 7 goals against 6.3 expected. Extrapolating to this year, even if he finished at that rate, he wouldn't have cracked 30 goals. His finishing ability is a real concern and that is important to remember.

But he does more than that. HockeyViz shows us how over the last couple seasons, he's been very good at driving offence (positive number in the top-left chart) and very good defensively (negative number in bottom-left chart):

Aside from his finishing ability, which seems poor, the over-arching issue is we have basically one season of high-end performance. He didn't show this level of play-driving ability, at least not offensively. He has usually been a good defensive player, but this level offensive play-driving is new. We then have to wonder if it's a one-season thing, or if it's the start of a new trend for him.

I am inclined to believe this level of play, or close to it, is the new norm for him. There are few better learning trees to be under than that of Crosby and Malkin, and that he picked up some offensive tips from them seems very plausible. Just watching him play, it's easy to see he gets involved offensively whenever he can. For fantasy, though, he hasn't earned his stripes, so to speak. He is not guaranteed PP1 time and 18 minutes a night wherever he lands, and that's the difference between another 15- to 20-goal season, or pushing the 30-goal mark. The nice thing is that he is assuredly going to be cheap in drafts come September, and he can bring stats across the board to supplement any lack of production.

This is an interesting case for fantasy. Let's say the Penguins let both Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang walk. Rodrigues could theoretically be the 2C (or 2RW) for this team in 2022-23, and on the top PP unit. That would put him in line for a big production jump, and more minutes overall. Of course, those are a lot of bridges to cross and it's only mid-May.

On the flipside, if Rodrigues walks, where he signs is of huge interest. Maybe he ends up in Colorado as the Nazem Kadri replacement, or on an up-and-comer like Los Angeles as they look to bolster their depth scoring. That wouldn't necessarily mean PP1 minutes, and with it the uncertainty of a production jump.

The Penguins may have hit on a diamond in the rough and they need lots of those if they want to extend the window that may have already slammed shut. His fantasy value will depend on where he lands, but I think he's turned a corner in his career. Either way, a fascinating player.