Now that we are officially at the All-Star Break, the unofficial (and not exactly) halfway point of the season, I wanted to take a moment to look back over the first half and highlight some of the performances we have seen to date. This week we will be focusing on those positive surprises – the players who are doing better than we expected. Next week we will tackle those who have disappointed.

To gather the data, I pulled Dobber's point pace projections from the beginning of the year (available in the Dobber Guide every year), and then compared that with a player's current point pace from a Big Board report from the Reports Page.

For the first slice, we are going to be looking at straight up change in point paces. This way of looking at it will capture the players who have literally put up the highest point total over their expected number (we will slice another way in a minute).

In the following table, moving left to right, we have basic player information, their preseason point per game projection, and current point per game pace, and then finally the difference between the two.

It will likely come as no surprise to anyone that Erik Karlsson tops this list. His career high 106-point pace is coming on the tail of three sub-60-point seasons. So what's the deal? Was it Brent Burns moving out? Is he finally healthy? Is he just getting lucky? I think the answer here is yes? I confess to not having seen a lot of San Jose this season, so can't speak to a change in strategy, but something is indeed different this year. While Karlsson's 23 and a half minutes of ice time and 60 percent of the team's power-play wasn't exactly a huge concern, adding two minutes of total ice time and another 10 percent of the team's power-play time is clearly better. I don't think it is a wild guess to attribute this at least in part to the departure of Burns. San Jose clearly doesn't have any option other than to run a top-heavy offense and power-play at this point and that seems to suit Karlsson just fine. Now no defensemen projects for over 100 points without a little bit of luck, and Karlsson is benefitting from some of that as well. Both his personal and team five-on-five shooting percentages are high indicating that some of this production should fall off. Even if both of those do drop over the remaining games, we would still be looking at an 80ish point pace for the rest of the reason. That pace is still the second highest of his career.

Josh Morrissey is a similar out of nowhere story. His current 84-point pace is light years ahead of his career high 43-point pace. There is no big gap that Morrissey is filling, but it does seem like either his role is slightly different, or he is finally filling the shoes that he has been floundering in over the past few seasons. His underlying numbers are high so he has either found a new gear or will come crashing back to earth. I am guessing the answer is somewhere in the middle. I think a bunch of this is for real, but there is some luck involved as well, so I am expecting something closer to a 65-point pace going forward.

It kind of seems like Connor McDavid and the Oilers are finally bringing a few other players along for the ride. Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are fulfilling some of the hype and excitement we usually feel when players get to play with McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Hyman's 100-point pace is certainly a big step up from his previous 60-point highs, but honestly it looks pretty good. Sure, his team five-on-five number is high, but is it unreasonable to expect a higher-than-average number when McDavid is on the ice with you? Even if you adjust his team and personal shooting percentages, he doesn't drop off the pace all that much. Nugent-Hopkins is in much the same boat, but with a few more warning signs. Much of what he is doing can be for real, though I would expect him to be closer to an 85–90-point pace going forward, while I think Hyman can sustain a bit higher.

In addition to looking at total production I also wanted to level set a bit. Basically, look at who performed highest when considering what they were projected for. The idea being that it's a little bit bigger of a deal for a player who was projected to get 40 points and gets 60 than a player who was projected to get 100 and gets 120. In order to do this, I took the change in points per game and listed it as a percent of their projected point number. Additionally, I had to do some filtering as that method does tend to highlight players with low games played numbers and fantasy irrelevant players who were projected for essentially no points, but have a few. The following list is the same as above, but sorted by the percent column on the far right.

There are definitely some overlapping names here, which makes sense as these are players who are putting up big increases in production, but there are a few other names worth highlighting too.

Dylan Guenther is on the list as a beneficiary of low rookie expectations, but has been doing reasonably well in his opportunity this far, but there really isn't a lot to say here.

Daniel Sprong is quite the story over on the Kraken this season. With no contract going into the season, he was invited for a professional tryout and forced his way onto the roster. Somehow, with fourth-line minutes he has put up 15 goals and a 57-point pace thus far. There are a few red flags in that his personal and team five-on-five shooting percentages are probably too high, but over the first half there is clearly something to the Kraken's spread the wealth strategy. Between Sprong and Eeli Tolvanen (ten goals in 28 games) who is ensconced on the third line, the Kraken are dominating the scoring in the bottom six. There is no line combination of players in the bottom six with a goals-for percent less than 60 percent (NaturalStatTrick). In that context, maybe it is possible for Sprong to maintain percentages a little better than we would normally expect given his deployment, but I would still assume a drop in point pace over the rest of the season.

Not to make this a Kraken-heavy section, but Adam Larsson is also an interesting name here. He is seeing almost two more minutes of ice a night, and his shot rate is creeping up which is also great. He isn't getting any time on the power-play time and his team five-on-five shooting percentage is quite high. Essentially this near 40-point pace he is on looks to be too high. From December 9 to January 16, he put up 13 points in 19 games (full season 56-point pace), which has already dropped to three points in his last six (42-point full-season pace). Best case is probably a 35–40-point pace going forward with reasonably strong peripherals.

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

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