Welcome back to another week of Analytics Advantage! This week, we'll be exploring a variety of graphs as part of our ongoing five-year analysis, providing insights into fantasy scoring trends. We’ll be looking at the top 20 performances in Fantasy Points Per Game (FPPG) since the 2019/20 campaign, identifying the top ten forwards and defensemen in FPPG for the 2023/24 campaign, and highlighting players who have shown significant improvement over the past few campaigns. As always, our fantasy points calculations are based on Orad's Handsome Fantasy Hockey League's scoring metrics, slightly adjusted for broader applicability. Here’s a quick reminder of the point values: Goals earn six points, Assists earn four points, Shots on Goal and Blocked Shots earn 1.6 points each, and Hits earn 0.6 points.

Why Analyze FPPG Changes?

Watching FPPG changes can reveal a lot about a player’s or team’s performance and potential. If a player’s FPPG is rising, it means they're contributing more fantasy points through goals, assists, shots, and hits, which is a good sign for their future fantasy performance. On the flip side, if their FPPG is dropping, it might indicate they're struggling to produce offensively or facing tougher competition.

FPPG is great for spotting players who are making a significant impact in fantasy leagues, even if they're not always scoring goals. While FPPG provides a comprehensive measure of a player’s contributions to fantasy scoring, it doesn't tell you everything about their real-world performance or other intangible contributions. So, use FPPG as part of a broader analysis to make the best fantasy hockey decisions.

Data Sources

The data for this analysis was sourced from player statistics spanning the 2019-2024 NHL campaigns, obtained from NaturalStatTrick.

Data Processing

Player statistics from the 2019-2024 campaigns were combined into a single dataset, then filtered for players who played at least ten games in each year to ensure a significant amount of playing time.

I chose these graph types to provide a comprehensive overview of fantasy hockey performance this week. The top performances in FPPG highlight the peak achievers, demonstrating how scoring trends have increased, with many recent players dominating this group. The charts showcasing the top forwards and defensemen for the 2023/24 campaign illustrate the standout performers from the past year. However, the most insightful set of graphs, in my opinion, focuses on players who have shown a significant improvement in FPPG, with at least 1.5x increase in FPPG over the past five campaigns. These graphs spotlight the most improved players, offering valuable insights for future fantasy picks.

The red bar on the graph is the league average FPPG for that given year

These graphs showcase the top performances from the past five campaigns, highlighting many of the familiar names that consistently appear in discussions about league scoring leaders.

This graph showcases the top ten forwards, with Nathan MacKinnon leading as the top FPPG producer for the 2023/24 campaign according to our scoring system.

These graphs show that Cale Makar‘s FPPG is much closer to his competitors compared to MacKinnon. This is because anything above 15.0 PPG is a rare feat. Defensemen generally have a lower standard deviation in FPPG, meaning their production levels are more closely grouped compared to forwards.

We’ll conclude with a series of player graphs, showcasing those whose trends and consistency were the most interesting and impactful. These graphs highlight significant trends and consistent performance or a significant improvement over the past five campaigns, providing valuable insights into development.

Thank you for reading and have a great rest of your day! Twitter/X – @DH_staspup for any questions, corrections, or comments. Please feel free to ask for any player’s graph, I can post it or DM.