In our last article before the start of the 2023-24 season, we are taking one last trip back in time to our 2022-23 data. Today we will be comparing first and second half splits and seeing which players had the best starts in 22-23.

In order to at least a little bit account for general point pace we are going to be using splits. The idea being that someone like McDavid is going to have the hottest start by virtue of just overall putting up the most points. What I would like to look at is players who saw big bumps at the start of the seasons compared to their overall numbers. The easiest way to look at that is just compare splits.

For the table below I have players stats based on a January date where most of the teams had played 40 or 41 games. Obviously, some of the players below did not quite that number, mostly due to injuries. I have each player's point per game number of the first half, over the second half and then the comparison. This data comes from two custom Big Board reports, one for each half and then I exported the data I was interested in.

The idea here is to dig into some of these players and see if there is anything that leads us to expect another hot start. We won't necessarily be looking at full season point pace for 23-24, just whether or not there was something to that hot start, or if it was all explained by variance.

Pierre-Luc Dubois, James van Riemsdyk, and Kevin Hayes are all going to be incredibly challenging to project as they all moved locations in the offseason. PLD is clearly the biggest name of those three and he has the highest expectations. Worst case likely sees him line up with Kevin Fiala and Arthur Kaliyev, but it remains to be seen how much ice time the line gets, and whether or not he cracks the top power-play. Big question marks there, but another big reason for his hot start was 19 goals on 105 shots, a shooting percentage well above his recent career average of 12.8 percent. The short answer here is he started relatively unsustainably and is in a brand-new situation so a repeat of that hot start is pretty unlikely.

Like with PLD Tage Thompson also had a high shooting percentage in the first half, but his 18 percent shooting percentage is much closer to the 15 percent he has managed the past two seasons. He did suffer a big decline in the second half, but there were also a lot of injury rumors and he missed some time at the end of 22-23. Of the two so far Thompson looks much more likely to repeat his hot start than PLD.

Bo Horvat also moved teams, but we do have a bit of a sample with his new team. If we look at his hot start from 22-23 though it was almost entirely driven by a huge shooting percentage. He was shooting at a rate of 24.4 percent well above his recent average of 13.7 percent. The whole thing is a bit of a mirage though as he was a bit snake bitten upon arriving on Long Island with only an 8.5 shooting percentage through the end of the season. Like with PLD it is hard to make predictions using past data when he will be entering his first full season with a new team, but he is unlikely to start with a 24.4 shooting percentage again over the course of the first 40 games.

Mathew Barzal, on the other hand, put up exactly his career average shooting percentage on his way to a hot start to 22-23. His overall points participation number was relatively in line with his recent career averages as well. He just seems to have been playing well. Add to that the fact that Horvat is on his way in and Barzal looks like the best of the group in the likelihood to repeat his first half from 22-23. Granted, he didn't exactly blow the doors off when he got to play with Horvat at the end of the season, but a full off season and training camp together should help them work out the kinks.

There was quite a bit of angst over the 22-23 offseason about the expectations for the Boston Bruins. Not the least of which was concern about Brad Marchand's surgery. He came back more quickly than expected and for the start of the season at least those concerns seemed to be mostly put aside. And then the second half happened and now we are back to concerned mode. The good news for 23-24 is that his first half was pretty much in line with his recent career averages, and it was the second half where his underlying numbers started to dip. That implies the potential for something of a bounceback in 23-24.

The bad news is that Marchand is 35, not too far removed from a major surgery, and just lost the most common linemate of his career. There is only one example from 22-23 and four since 20-21 of a player 34 or older putting up 90-plus points (and two of them are Sidney Crosby). Essentially putting up his pace from the first half of the season again in 23-24 would put Marchand in elite company and the odds seem very much stacked against him doing so.

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

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