There will be a brief discussion on one of the Nashville centres a little later, but it's worth talking a bit about their current winger situation, too. Both Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson had down years (for different reasons) and there just isn't a lot to speak of offensively beyond that with Granlund and Smith gone. They need help, and hopefully the help comes in the form of Philip Tomasino and Eeli Tolvanen. About that first name, a curious little tidbit:

So Tomasino is going to wear 26 this season per the #Preds 👀

Hmmm

— Bryan Bastin (@BryanBastin) October 21, 2020

As Mr. Bastin of On The Forecheck states in a subsequent tweet, teams normally don't announce the numbers of players who won't be on the roster. If Tomasino can step in as a second-line winger, this is a huge win for the Preds. Regardless, it's good news for dynasty owners. They may get a new player in their lineup in short order.

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There will be a little discussion on Phillip Danault later, and one thing I noticed researching that: he has never been given significant PP minutes, even as he's turned into an elite passer. You know who else didn't get significant PP minutes until literally Claude Julien's last year in Boston? Brad Marchand, at the age of 28. This seems to be a pattern from the coach.

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A second ECHL team, the Norfolk Admirals, announced yesterday they won't be returning for the 2020-21 season. There are some NHLers that eventually come out of the ECHL, so this could be a wrench into the development plans for some. More as this develops.

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Shot assists is an important stat for fantasy owners to know. Work done on passing years ago by Ryan Stimson and his team found that the sequence of passes prior to a shot is an important predictor of shots turning into goals. While that may seem intuitive, finding out things like players are ~33 percent more likely to score on a generic shot that was preceded by at least two passes rather than on a generic shot with zero passes puts into focus how important puck movement is. There is a lot more of interest to fantasy owners in that link above, so I recommend combing through that finely.

Anyway, actually coming up with shot assists is hard. The NHL doesn't track plays, only events, so while we know who took a shot and from where, we don't know everything that happened the 20 seconds prior. For now, that needs to be done the good old-fashioned way: watching each second of each game and recording what happens. And that's exactly what Corey Sznajder does at his Patreon, which is a treasure trove of fantasy-relevant data not available to the general public.

Now that the offseason has arrived for the second time this year, we have lots of time to dig through this and other bits of information. I thought I would share a handful of players who's shot-assist numbers surprised me, either for good or bad, from the 2019-20 season. A few notes on this:

• Not every single game has been recorded by Mr. Sznajder. There are games missing and that varies from team to team, so I set an arbitrary cut-off of players with at least 200 minutes at 5-on-5. That works out to roughly 20 percent of a season, though that largely depends on position and role. Not a huge sample, but enough to work with.
• I won't give out all the data, just a handful of names, so please don't ask. This is a tremendous undertaking on his part and it's his full-time job. My intention is just to help fantasy owners down the road, not give them the keys to the car.
• We will not drawing any grand conclusions about 250 minutes of 5-on-5 play in one season. There will be discussion about what it means but pointing to one number and calling it definitive proof of anything is misleading at best.
• All passes are not equal. Some can lead to a shot with a 10 percent conversion rate, some for 20. How the shot assists break down is important, but we'll save that for another day. For now, we are just concerned with the aggregate number.
• These are primary shot assist rates, or passes that lead directly to a shot, not all the passes before it.
• This is all at 5-on-5 unless otherwise noted, and we’re just dealing with forwards today.

Clear as a drive to work over a bridge on a cool fall morning? Good.

Ryan Johansen

All passes aren't equal, but I was shocked how well Johansen ranked here, namely because of how bad the Preds forwards were offensively this year, and Johansen posting a seven-year low in assists/60 minutes. He usually ranks high (like, near the top of the league) in this regard, so I assumed he fell off. He did not. All the same, Johansen's shot assist rate in 2019-20 exceeded that of Patrick Kane and Johnny Gaudreau, with Nikita Kucherov and Brad Marchand just ahead of him on our list. He has continued to perform in process as he has in recent seasons yet his assists per game fell off a cliff. There are still concerns fantasy-wise for the Preds – a lot of it being Jon Hynes – but if Johansen keeps doing what he does, his wingers will rebound, and so will he. How much they rebound is the question.

Phillip Danault

This is a player who is known almost exclusively for his defensive prowess, but he has more 5-on-5 points over the last two years than Elias Pettersson, Mathew Barzal, or Sebastian Aho. It really is curious that with Danault being such a great passer that Montreal's power play has been so bad (he hasn't been featured much, is one issue, as described above). Regardless, with Danault now being a triple-digit hitter, he has a lot more fantasy value than he did two years ago.

Dominik Simon

Our sample, which works out to over 240 forwards, has a player inside the 89^th percentile that is also a free agent who can probably be signed for close to the league minimum. He is also stellar defensively, so it's very curious teams don't want him in their bottom-6. Either way, Simon's shot-assist rate in our sample of games saw him sandwiched between Nathan MacKinnon and Mitch Marner. It is unlikely Simon ever earns enough minutes to be relevant in most fantasy leagues, but in the right spot he could have value in deeper leagues.

Martin Necas

Finishing just behind Marner was Martin Necas, the Carolina rookie who posted 16 goals and 36 points last year. He was just outside the 90^th percentile in primary shot-assist rate, and combined with good-to-great zone entri/exit rates, it certainly bodes well for his NHL future. The problem here is he doesn't shoot, having a shot rate near the bottom-third of the league. He still has a lot of time to grow into more shots, but it is something to keep an eye on. True fantasy stars can both pass and shoot, so Necas needs to start demonstrating the latter in 2020-21 for us to really be excited about his fantasy potential. It's the difference between, say, the last 4-5 years of Blake Wheeler and the last 4-5 years of Ryan Johansen.

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin

Just because I found it funny: in our sample of over 240 forwards, Pittsburgh's top two centres finished first and second in primary shot assists/60 minutes. Maybe it's not time just yet to start writing off the Penguins, especially now that the top-6 is full restocked with true top-6 wingers (though your mileage may vary on Kasperi Kapanen). Injuries are the concern here, not necessarily performance when healthy.

Ryan Getzlaf

Despite Getzlaf posting his lowest assists/game rate of the last decade-plus, there is hope for a rebound here. The Ducks played much better hockey post-Carlyle, they have lots of good, young players on the way (hopefully a couple break out), and Getzlaf's shot-assist rate was in the same range it's been the last several seasons. I think the potential will be there for Getzlaf to get back to the 50-assist mark, he just needs to play 80 games and have his wingers finish their shots. With Getzlaf's hit rate, don't write off the 35-year old just yet.

Kaapo Kakko

I wanted to mention him because his shot-assist rate was among the worst in the league. That is not hyperbole: he was near the bottom of our sample and when including all forwards, he was in the 22^nd percentile. He just did not make an effort to pass the puck to his teammates in the offensive zone.

What should be noted about this is it's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of prominent fantasy options are near the 25^th and 50^th percentile range in shot assists: Jeff Skinner, Chris Kreider, Mike Hoffman, and Brock Boeser are just a few recent instances. It should be said, though, that none of those four guys has ever had a 40-assist season, one has never had a 30-assist season, and one (Skinner) hasn't had a 30-assist season in nearly a decade. In other words, Kakko becoming a reliable 25- or 30-goal scorer doesn't inherently mean he'll be a fantasy superstar in the future, nor does the lack of passing mean he'll be fantasy irrelevant. The fact is he's still just 19 years old and has a lot of growth in his game to come. Do not get too concerned with those passing stats yet. Just keep an eye on them.