Back in August and then again in October we spent some time digging into players that might have been positioned to break out based on their 2023-24 seasons. Now that NHL action is wrapping up, I want to take a look back and see how our break out potentials fared. We are using point pace information as of April 10th. Teams have a couple of games left, but there is more than enough information here to talk trends.

As a reminder, this piece is loosely based on some work on breakout thresholds. The full article was posted on June 30th, 2022 and is a good read so definitely go check it out. The summary is that there tends to be a game count by which players start to break out. In this case breakout is defined as a 25 percent year-over-year increase. What they found is that average size forwards need about 200 games, and D plus exceptionally small, or larger forwards need about 400 games.  Please go check it out for more details, but one section in particular caught my attention.

"It’s always a great indicator if you see that a player finishes the previous season with 230 or 240 career games, and he just enjoyed a very strong second half. When you see that, then feel confident in a potential breakout for the year ahead."

That got me excited because these are a couple of variables that we can easily filter and sort for (height being a bit more of a challenge in our current report options). With the right table or reports we can pull this information together and get a list of players who meet these criteria. According to this research it should be a list of players poised to do good things in next year. The article also makes clear that these are all generalities, and there are definitely exceptions, but it made me very interested to see who might be on this list.

Last summer then I exported the data from 2023-24 ran some filters and came up with the following list of seven names.

The TLDR of that article from August was that Matt Boldy, Seth Jarvis, and Cole Caulfield were my top picks to improve. I was optimistic that Lucas Raymond and Alex Newhook might repeat, had some more serious reservations about Morgan Frost and thought Trevor Zegras was a wild card given his career history. So how did our group do in 23-24? I am turning to Frozen Tools' Big Board report to find out (as of Thursday, April 10):

First off, no one really hit their breakout threshold. Zegras was the closest, but he was already an odd case given his career history. But let's separate these players into a couple of groups here. First up guys who exceeded their 2023-24 paces. That list includes Caufield, Zegras, Raymond, and Jarvis. That leaves us with Boldy as the repeater, and Newhook and Frost as way off the mark.

Caufield managed to increase his point pace despite an unexpected drop in ice time. The whole deal here is that usually around this time in a player's career they are gaining time in addition to player maturity. Instead, Caufield lost 30 seconds on average on the power play and about a minute and 20 seconds of overall ice time. That plus the addition of Patrik Laine's power-play role meant a drop in about a shot per game for Caufield. Given that he is putting up a higher point pace with less overall time it should be no surprise that his points per 60 actually increased. If he played closer to the 20-minute mark (like he did in 2023-24) and he maintained his scoring rate per 60 from 2024-25 he would have been point per game, just like the projection indicated.

It is really hard to know exactly what to make of Zegras. Yes, he met his threshold, but a 50-point pace is still down from his previous career numbers. It is an odd season too, he was essentially only a 40-point player through the first quarter, but has about a 60-point pace since January 23rd, and a 70-point pace since March 9th. His shot rates are below two per game on the season for the first time in his career and have still been quite low during the last month.

For Raymond I was a little worried about a shooting percentage regression eating into his potential breakout number, and honestly that is kind of what has happened. He gained almost a minute and 20 seconds per night, a chunk of that on the power play, and increased his shot rates. If he was scoring on 19% of his shots like last year he would be bang on a 90 point pace – just like projected.

Seth Jarvis saw increases across the board, his overall time on ice went up by about 40 seconds, his power-play time by over 30 seconds, his shot rates by almost a half a shot per game. All of this is strikingly similar to Raymond. Also similar is a drop in shooting percentage. If he was scoring on almost 19% of his shots like in 23-24 he would almost be meeting that projection with an 80 point pace. The other factor seems to be his team shooting percentage which has dropped by about two percent from 10.3 to 8.4. That is a pretty sizable drop indicating that his team isn't scoring as efficiently on chances while he is on the ice. Even so he has managed to maintain his point per 60 number and increased his per game production.

The moral of the story for all of these players is that the 'multiply by 1.25' projection for any player in the games played range, who had a better second half is a bit of a blunt instrument, but when you actually look at what happened here, I can make an argument that with just a little nuance it was essentially right on the money for Caufield (no way we could have predicted a drop in ice time, but the point per 60 pace was right), and for Raymond and Jarvis (if we adjust the 23-24 point pace because of their shooting percentages the projected point pace is basically right).

As for Boldy, he has essentially maintained his pace, but I am ok calling a bit of a mulligan here. He increased total time on ice by more than a minute and maintained his power-play percentage. He increased his shot rates and was more involved in the goals scored while he was on the ice. Unfortunately, the Wild have missed Joel Eriksson Ek, and Kirill Kaprizov for significant chunks of time this season which makes the power play less effective, and just hurts the team as a whole. So, while he didn't quite hit the numbers we might have hoped, I haven't really soured on Boldy based on this season.

The same can not be said for Alex Newhook. I was looking at Newhook's power-play role over the second half, the possibility of getting Laine on his wing, the potential breakout threshold bump in ice time and wondering if that might make Newhook's strong second half carry over into the 24-25 season. It absolutely did not. Part of it was Kirby Dach coming back and taking a lineup spot for a chunk of the season, part of it was Dach, Laine, and Juraj Slafkovsky getting the power-play spots over Newhook, part of it is that Laine, who has been great on the power play, only has 14 even strength points over 48 games, and part of it is that Newhook just hasn't been good. His 26-point pace is not only a far cry from the projected 64 point pace but is a career low. He lost almost two minutes of overall ice time, and a minute and a half of power play. His team shooting percentage is low, his participation numbers at even strength are low, and are incredibly poor on the power play, while his expected goal numbers remained largely the same as in 23-24. That implies that he maintained some amount of his own play but was catching a bit of bad luck. Unfortunately, even if all of that was corrected, with his time on ice, shot rates, and low producing linemates a 40-point pace is about the max we might have expected to see.

I was pretty down on Morgan Frost because his underlying numbers didn't seem primed for increases so he was going to need to rely on a big increase in deployment and a corresponding increase in shot rates, and I assumed that would be hard to come by with John Tortorella. That is basically what came to pass. His ice time has increased lately, but only with the move to Calgary. It was otherwise very similar and his shot rates were similar. Basically, everything is similar to 23-24 except he has been getting in on fewer of the goals scored while he is on the ice. The result? A very similar, except worse 24-25.

The takeaway here is that adding a little nuance is important for these breakout projections. Adjusting a point pace a bit prior to taking on the breakout projection, and really taking a hard look at potential for increased deployment are two items I will be emphasizing in future takes on this analysis.

That is all for this week.

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