The big news from the last couple of days is surely the huge extension from Sabres centre Tage Thompson. He signed a seven-year, $7-million AAV contract with Buffalo, a deal that will take him through to his early 30s ($7.14M per year, to be exact). Alex wrote about this in his Ramblings yesterday, covering the leaps in things like shooting percentage and on-ice shooting percentage that Thompson had in his career-best 2021-22 season.

I wanted to dig deeper on this because at his price, cap league owners will have a decision to make. Paying $7M a season for a 35-goal, 70-point centre with huge shot rates is doable in these formats; a 25-goal, 50-point centre, not so much. Figuring out which he's likely to be is very important. Data will be taken from our Frozen Tools and Natural Stat Trick.

What sticks out, as Alex mentioned, is the shooting percentage. At 5-on-5, Thompson had never had a season above 6.4% shooting and he exploded to 14.1% in 2021-22. That is a huge leap, and seems very high, but among 387 forwards with at least 500 minutes played, it's not even in the top-50. The NHL saw its highest league-wide shooting percentage in 15 years so there were a lot of players ahead of him. And it isn't as if he's never scored at any level; he had 20 goals in 54 AHL games across the 2017-2020 seasons. That is a 30-goal/82-game pace, so it isn't as if his finishing issues at the NHL level were a continuation of what he did at lower levels.

As for his jump in shooting percentage, it isn't hard to chalk a good chunk of that up to better line mates. Thompson had been lined up almost exclusively in the bottom-6 his entire NHL career. For the COVID 2021 campaign, that included the likes of Rasmus Asplund and Casey Mittelstadt as his most-common line mates. Looking to 2018-19, he skated roughly half his ice time with Vladimir Sobotka, in what ended up being Sobotka's last full-time NHL season because his career had fallen off a cliff. Thompson, who was a unicorn because of his size and position, had regularly been playing with bottom-6 talent in Buffalo. A wise man once said, "the hardest minutes a player can play is with bad line mates." Until the 2021-22 season, this was a big problem for the big centre.

It wasn't as if he wasn't getting chances, though. From 2018-2021, Thompson's individual expected goals rate was 0.74, tied with names like Nikolaj Ehlers, Travis Konecny, and Aleksander Barkov. His problem was finishing like Andrew Cogliano, something that would change.

The second piece of important information here is Thompson playing off the rush. He started doing more of that in 2021-22, as the whole team did: per Corey Sznajder's tracking data, only St. Louis, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Colorado, and Florida created more off the rush than Buffalo did in 2021-22. As for Thompson, on a per 60-minute basis, Thompson was creating roughly as often off the rush as names like Barkov, Kirill Kaprizov, Connor McDavid, David Pastrnak, Matthew Tkachuk, and Artemi Panarin:

Buffalo was above average in rush offence in the COVID 2021 season, but under new coach Don Granato, they moved themselves among the top teams in generating offence with pace rather than forechecking. To no one's surprise, guys like Jeff Skinner, Alex Tuch, and Victor Olofsson all benefitted from this change in the offence, but no one more than Thompson. Coaching impacts are a very real thing and while they're tough for most of us to measure, it seems clear Buffalo was playing differently under Granato than other coaches over the last five years.

So, we have a centre who stands 6'7" – the tallest forward in the league, mind you – who almost certainly needed some time to adjust his play with his size to the NHL level. (We here at Dobber love to remind people that it takes a few years for most players to break out, and taller players more than others.) He had been skating with below average line mates almost exclusively for his career, with the commensurate ice time. He was also playing in systems that didn't necessarily discourage playing off the rush, but certainly didn't encourage it to the level we've seen under Don Granato. Those are things we need to keep in mind when looking at his career.

Here is where some concerns start. First, Thompson really didn't play well unless he had Skinner on his wing. We can make fun of Skinner's contract, but he's typically been very strong with controlled zone entries and exits, something that would facilitate Thompson shooting off the rush. It wasn't something Thompson did a lot himself, so he needed his wingers to help with the transition work. To that end, the team scored 18% less when Thompson was on the ice without Skinner at 5-on-5, and expected goals generated plummeted from nearly 3.0 per 60 minutes to this (from HockeyViz):

We should also note that per Sznajder's data mentioned earlier, Thompson's controlled entries percentage (successes vs failures) was well over a standard deviation above average. He was above average on a per-60 basis, so there was improvement here. A rising tide lifts all boats, and perhaps Thompson finally getting comfortable with his size, getting better line mates, and having a coach that preaches a different kind of offence helped him do that. However, it is just one season of being above/well-above average in these regards, so we need to see more of it before saying it's a permanent part of his repertoire. That is another concern we should have here: if he's put in a position where he's in charge of transition, he may not have the vision to complete the mission.

Our second issue is one of playmaking. His 2021-22 breakout season saw him well below average in a number of areas like scoring chance assists (passes leading directly to scoring chances), seam passes, and one-timer passes:

From a fantasy perspective, this is a bit of a problem. Not that we'd argue too much if he scored 35-40 goals, but it does hurt his raw points upside. Even as the team around him improves, without improvements of his own in this area, we can't reasonably expect 50-assist seasons like we do from producing centres like Barkov or Evgeny Kuznetsov. In some sense, it is unfair to compare him to most centres. He's not really the playmaker on his line, as other top centres are. In that sense, he's more Ryan Hartman or Josh Norris than he is Barkov or Kuznetsov, at least for now.

The last point we'll touch on here is his defensive play. While we don't really care how bad a player is defensively in the fantasy game, but everything is connected in a hockey game. Being able to turn pucks over in your zone, or dig pucks out and get it moving the other way, helps create more offence than when you don't. While he can get the team moving towards the offensive zone when he does retrieve the puck, how often he actually retrieves the puck is, well, not very often:

There are other reasons why his defensive play may not be up to snuff, but his defensive impacts have remained below average his entire career. This is something that can change as he matures but for now it is an open question.

Without a doubt, there are concerns here. His transition play is fine but not great, his playmaking is poor, and his defensive talents need some work. But that's just focusing on the negative here. He is a guy that absolutely loves to shoot the puck, is playing with a coach that encourages playing off the rush which works to his and Skinner's advantage, and is probably just starting to feel comfortable using his size to his advantage. He turns 25 in October but still doesn't have three full seasons' worth of games under his belt (223 regular season contests across five years). The team around him is improving, he's finally playing with good line mates, and he has a good history of scoring at lower levels.

I have seen comparisons to what he did to what William Karlsson did back in 2017-18 with Vegas. That probably isn't very fair to Thompson. Karlsson shot 23.4% that year, tied for the third-highest single season mark since the lockout 2012 season. Thompson shooting 15% is a far cry from that. Karlsson also scored a grand total of 10 goals in his 61 AHL games, compared to Thompson's aforementioned 20 in 54 contests. Even if we want to compare career-best seasons, the way they got there is not the same by any stretch.

In the real world, $7M a season isn't paying him as an elite centre. Even as the vast majority of that contract buys unrestricted years, he'll be outside the top-25 centres by cap hit, per Cap Friendly. In terms of AAV, he's closer to Brock Nelson and Nick Schmaltz than he is to Mika Zibanejad or Sebastian Aho. The cap should really start to climb in a couple years and if Thompson maintains anywhere close to the level he showed in 2021-22, it could look like a great deal by 2025. Again, there are concerns about rounding out his game, but we need to remember this is a team that is hoping to contend a few years from now, not immediately. There isn't as much pressure on him and the team to be great at the moment, but that day will come.

In the fantasy realm, it would really depend on the format whether his $7M cap hit will be worth it. Obviously, that contract doesn't even start for a year, so decisions don't really need to be made now, unless some owners are real nervous and want to trade him while he still has that very cheap 2022-23 AAV as part of his value profile. As for the format, because of those playmaking concerns, fantasy owners in points-only formats will have a decision to make. Even if he's a 70-point centre for years to come, that may not even be top-20 among centres in the league: 21 different centres hit 70 points in 2021-22. With Thompson inside the top-30 by cap hit for centres, the value isn't great unless there's improvement in his assist totals.

There are also concerns in multi-cat formats. He had a very poor faceoff percentage in his first full season playing the middle and could lose faceoffs to Dylan Cozens in late-game or defensive situations. He had a great shot rate but didn't hit as much as we might think for a guy his size with 66 in 78 games. He did have much higher hit rates early in his career but as he's moved to more of a goal scoring role, that has declined significantly on a per-minute basis. If he can somehow bring that back up, it's a different story, but maybe they don't want him wearing himself down by running into players.

At best, this isn't an easy fantasy decision. Unless he improves his playmaking, there may not be huge value with his cap hit in points-only formats after the 2022-23 season. And unless he re-introduces his physicality and improves his faceoff percentage, there may not be huge value in multi-cat leagues after the 2022-23 season. Anyone with big concerns about him rounding out his game should probably trade him before the 2022-23 season to maximize his value.

With Buffalo getting better, Granato seeming like a very good coach, and Thompson finally getting used to his huge frame at this level, I think there are still excellent goal scoring seasons to come from the soon-to-be 25-year-old. He is a guy I had been waiting for to break out because of his penchant for shots, so maybe I have rose-coloured glasses on. He does have other aspects of his game to fine-tune if he wants to really push himself into the next level of forwards but with the support system around him, I'll take a stand and say he does it. Maybe he's never a point-per-game centre, but 30-goal, 30-assist seasons with monster shot rates seems very reasonable for him, for now.

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Writing about Thompson made me think about Alex Tuch. Returning from injury after Christmas, the winger had 22 points in 22 games through to the end of February. From that point on, he had 16 points in 28 games. So, what was going on here?

First, we should note his Individual Points Percentage at 5-on-5 (IPP, or the rate at which he gets a point when a Buffalo goal was scored) was just 52.9% over the final two months. In his four full seasons in Vegas, he was never below 64.7%. He was playing further up the lineup in Buffalo so perhaps better line mates were taking more touches, but only 9% of regular NHL forwards had an IPP under 53% for the full season. We have to think that rebounds for Tuch regardless of which line he lands on.

Second, his personal shooting percentage at 5-on-5 cratered to 5.8%. If that were to persist for a full year, it'd be a career-worst for him, and he shot 9.1% over the prior three seasons. It seems he just ran into a lot of bad luck as the season was closing.

The big problem as I see it is his lineup slotting. The team was much worse offensively when he was skating with Mittelstadt as opposed to Thompson. Those two did play a lot together over the last month of the season and could be together again to open the year. Unless Mittelstadt takes a big development leap, 60 points might be a big stretch for Tuch. With Jack Quinn likely to make the team, we could very well see Mittelstadt and Tuch back together to open the season.

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Speaking of Quinn, if Tuch does start with Mittelstadt, Quinn could have a direct flight to the top line with Skinner and Thompson. He thoroughly destroyed the AHL with 61 points in 45 games, landing over three shots per game. He seems ready for the big leagues and could very well start on the top line for Buffalo. He turns 21 years old in September so it's not like he's a fresh-faced teenager stepping into the lineup. An issue with almost any rookie is whether he'll earn a top PP role, but he is good enough that he could force the coach's hand here. By the end of the season, we could easily see him in the Calder Trophy race, and he is a name to put a star beside for the late rounds in one-year fantasy leagues.