This week we are turning our attention to our well-rounded contributors. Every so often we pause the more points-oriented conversations to highlight those strong multi-cat contributors across the league.

For today's article I took the Multi-Category report and exported it for the season to date (before games started on November 14). The tables below contain basic player information as well as point, shot, hit, and block per game numbers. I use per-game numbers to account for differences in games played. I have divided players into a few groups, based on their position and/or their general multi-cat profile.

First up we have our forward studs. These are guys who are putting up more than two shots per game, more than one hit per game, and at least 0.9 blocks per game.

In this group, you do get a little bit of choice as to your flavor. Nick Suzuki for example has been a point-per-game producer, but slightly lower on the shot and hit counts, whereas Ross Colton and Frank Vatrano are less likely to have the point production, but have excellent shot and hit numbers.

Suzuki is fairly unique on this list as having a pretty high offensive upside. He has been increasing his point pace over the years, and while he is running a little hot right now, certainly point per game is possible. He has been shooting twice per game for years, and while he fluctuates slightly, for better or worse (we would love to see a higher shot rate) this number seems pretty stable. The story is fairly similar for hits, though his current 1.25 hits per game is a bit on the high side. Blocks have jumped quite a bit this year, even though he has a smaller share of the penalty kill and less time on ice overall. That raises a couple of question marks.

Ross Colton is just one big question mark. He was getting some huge deployment prior to getting hurt, and it doesn't look like that opportunity is going to be available upon his return. My guess is a lot of this – both the production, and the cross-category contributions will not be quite the same when he returns.

Tom Wilson is basically more of the same. He started hot in terms of point production, but his cross-category stat production is well known at this point and looks pretty consistent with his previous seasons.

We don't have a huge track record on Fabian Zetterlund, as the 2023-24 season was his first season of 82 games. The big change is in his hit rates. His shot and block rates look pretty consistent otherwise. He is playing a little less than last year, which makes sense given the reinforcements that San Jose got over the summer, so his hit rate does bear watching.

Frank Vatrano and Brayden Schenn are certainly having low point production seasons, but are generally doing what we expected them to do peripheral-wise. Schenn is seeing a bigger blocks number than usual but is also seeing more time on the penalty kill which likely accounts for some of that.

We don't always see forwards doing a lot of blocking, so adding a filter for blocks really limits the production in other categories. Given that I wanted to include a few names who are very strong contributors across multiple categories, just not in blocks.

Some very familiar names here. Alex Ovechkin and Brady Tkachuk are household names as players who score, shoot, and hit. They are continuing to do what we expect them to do. Sam Bennett is off to a fast start points-wise, but putting up very similar peripherals to what he has historically done in Florida. Filip Forsberg is also doing more or less what we expected, though his hit numbers have seen a bump thus far.

Moving on to defense, I always like to see what players are putting up more than two shots, two hits, and two blocks per game.

So far this year there is just one name: Mackenzie Weegar. This isn't exactly a surprise, he was putting up similar numbers in 2023-24, though those numbers were a bit of an increase over his previous (though still good) cross category production. He is seeing 23:30 total minutes and 60 percent of the total power-play time so the opportunity is good for continuing to put up strong numbers.

If we relax the category filters slightly to 1.5 across the board, we have a few more (still familiar names).

Darnell Nurse and Jacob Trouba are very consistent names whenever these conversations have come up over the years, and Moritz Seider has joined the ranks in the last couple of seasons as well. So far, no surprises.

Colton Parayko is kind of an interesting name. He has historically been a guy who we hoped would be on these lists, and maybe even turn into a Weeger-esque point producer as well. This is the first time since 2019-20 that he has averaged more than two shots per game. He is also putting up career high hit numbers, and the only season where he has averaged more blocks was 2023-24 (but both are significant increase from his career history). His overall ice time and penalty kill time look pretty similar to 2023-24, which is an argument for the blocks to keep up, but I want to see a bit more before assuming that this category production is locked in for the season.

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

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