It is Bubble Week over here at Dobber Hockey. All of our articles this week have been touching on players with question marks. The ones you might be considering keeping, or might not. For my article this week we are going to be looking at production per 60. It is particularly interesting to me to look at players who are performing well given their opportunity.

For many of these players we will be discussing, the literal "keep" or not question will depend on the depth of the league and how many players you typically keep. If your league is a keep three, or a keep five, likely you will have better options than the ones we are going through today. I am purposefully looking a little bit deeper to see what diamonds we can find.

As far as process goes, I put together a custom table. I wanted some general per 60 numbers so pulled the Per 60 Min report to get that info. I also wanted to compare that data to a player's expected goal numbers, so pulled the Expected Goals/60 report. Finally I also wanted to be able to filter by time on ice, so I grabbed the Ice Time report as well. Once I had all of these exported, I pulled the data I wanted from each into a separate sheet.

The first columns are fairly straight forward, (Name, Pos, Team, GP) and are listed in most of the reports. I then included average power-play time on ice and total time on ice. I am going to use that in some of the filters to target certain kinds of players. We then have a player's total points and then goals, assists, and points per 60. I then included a few five-on-five specific stats, a player's total five on five minute, their total expected goals, and their expected goals per 60. The expected goal numbers are based on how many goals were expected to be scored while they were on the ice, not necessarily how many expected goals they should have scored, or even how many points they should have gotten. It can be helpful to have a comparison and give us an idea if the production we saw was a result of luck and being on the ice for strong play.

As far as "Bubble" goes, I am looking at two sets of players. One set has performed well in limited minutes, while the other had the minutes and good underlying numbers, but less than expected production. In each set I will highlight a few of the options.

On to the numbers. For our first set of players, we are going to be looking at players who had good production in 2021-22 (so high per 60 numbers), plus solid expected goal numbers (which indicates that their production wasn't a complete mirage), but relatively low ice time (less that 16:30 on average). These are players then that did provide value, but could do even better with a bit of additional time.

Michael Bunting leads the list and he was certainly a breakout rookie in 2021-22. His whole value is dependent on that deployment with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, so I am not sure we are looking for another step forward at this point.

Andre Burakovsky is an interesting one. He has performed well in his last few seasons with Colorado, but is heading over to a brand-new situation in Seattle. Typically a second line player on this list heading to a situation where he could be a top line, top power-play forward would be a slam dunk recommendation, but there are a couple of pauses here. His 2.79 expected goals per 60 is higher than any Kraken forward from last season. The second highest currently rostered player is Oliver Bjorkstrand (also a new Kraken). The Kraken player who was actually on the team last season with the most dangerous scoring chances (and who played more than half the season) was Jared McCann at 2.09 expected goals per 60. Scoring was a mess last season for the Kraken and the addition of Bjorkstrand and Burakovsky should help dramatically (as should the return of Jaden Schwartz and Brandon Tanev, and newcomers Matty Beniers and Shane Wright) so I don't expect the most dangerous Kraken to be at a 2.09 expected goals per 60 level, but it is a bit of a warning sign for an otherwise very strong candidate for growth.

Tyler Toffoli and Andrew Mangiapane on the other hand have a huge opportunity. Both were solid producers at a per 60 level and saw good offense when they were on the ice. One of them is going to be taking the top line role with Elias Lindholm and super distributor Jonathan Huberdeau. Whoever gets that will not only see an increase in their ice time (so these numbers would suggest a solid increase in production), but access to great linemates which would juice the per 60 numbers (just look at Bunting).

The second category I wanted to look at is players who are getting decent opportunity (more than 17 minutes a night on average), have very strong expected goal numbers, but low point per 60 numbers. These skaters are getting a lot of time, one the ice when offense is being generated, but are not cashing in on it as much as we might have expected.

Phillip Danault started the season a bit slow with only nine points in his first 20 games. He clicked with Viktor Arvidsson and Trevor Moore down the stretch though putting up 42 points in his final 56 games (a 62 point full season pace). He definitely is used in defensive minutes as well, but he tops this list for expected goals for per 60, and ranks 18th in the league in this stat. That means he was on the ice for a lot of dangerous play, and by the second half was starting to cash in on it. That line looks set to maintain next season, there is definitely some reason for optimism here.

It is always great to have an opportunity to talk about Nikolaj Ehlers. Clearly he is on this list because he is getting decent deployment and has pretty strong expected goal numbers. His 73-point 21-22 season was a bit of a down year compared to his 80-point 2020-21 pace, though it isn't like he dramatically underperformed. Now until he gets more than two minutes a night on the power-play his value is certainly limited. However, there are a lot of good numbers here for Ehlers. He hit 80 points with a slightly inflated shooting percentage, but he actually increased his expected goals numbers and shot rates from 2020-21 to 2021-22. The problem was that he saw a very low IPP, and secondary assist rate. Basically Ehler shot more and was on the ice for more/better chances than in 2020-21 (areas he has more control over) but happened to miss out on other people's production (which is very random). Moral of the story, point per game is still very much in the cards even without additional power-play time.

Valeri Nichushkin goes on this list sort of by default, but this isn't telling us anything we didn't already know. He had been providing all sorts of under-the-radar value since coming to Colorado, but really exploded when Colorado had injuries, and in the playoffs. He has a reasonably high points per 60 mark for this group, but he is certainly one to watch and could be worth prospective keep in deeper leagues.

That is all for this week. Do your part to support organizations working to make hockey for everyone.

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