There is a number on your goalie board this fall that you should stop believing in: 60 starts. Nobody in the NHL projects to get there. Karel Vejmelka led the entire league last season with 63, a figure that wouldn't have cracked the top ten in 2007-08: the year Evgeni Nabokov and Martin Brodeur both [...]
Picture two skaters next to each other in your draft queue this September. Both scored at about a two-point-per-game fantasy clip last season; both are penciled into a top-six job this fall with a real shot at power-play time. One is 21, entering his second NHL season. The other is 26, entering his fifth. The [...]
Two forwards finish a season with the same point total, the same shot volume, the same power-play time. One plays on a team that wins 60% of its games; the other plays on a team that was selling by American Thanksgiving. In most fantasy formats those are not the same player — and the entire [...]
Picture two 31-year-olds, both coming off 55-point seasons, both available at the same keeper price. One is a winger and one is a defenseman. A dataset of every NHL season since 1917 says that choice isn't close, but the reason is different from the one you usually hear, and getting it right means walking past [...]
Phil Esposito scored 76 goals in 1970-71. Auston Matthews scored 69 in 2023-24. Chris Pronger never cracked 63 points in a season, and Erik Karlsson has beaten that number seven times. George Hainsworth once finished a full season with a goals-against average under 1.00. So, which of those was the best? You can't actually answer [...]
The Hockey Hall of Fame announced its class this month, and the part that always bothers me is the people it didn’t announce. A committee meets behind a closed door, argues for an afternoon, and reads out a list. No vote totals, no runners-up, no math. You learn who got in. You never learn who [...]
Last week, this column left the Final as a natural experiment: the Carolina Hurricanes’ 14-scorer committee against the Vegas Golden Knights’ two-man star vehicle, the goaltending dead even, and Game 6 set up as a referendum on which build wins. Carolina closed it out in six and won the Stanley Cup with its backup. Frederik [...]
The Stanley Cup Final heads back to Vegas with Carolina up 3-2, and the two teams left standing are a natural experiment in how to build a winner. Carolina has spread its 63 goals across 14 different scorers; its top two finishers, Logan Stankoven and Jordan Staal, account for just 30% of the offense. Vegas [...]
Analytics Advantage: Brett Howden, the Slot-vs-Point Battle, and Why This Cup Final Is Going the Distance The Carolina Hurricanes and Vegas Golden Knights have split the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final, and the series heads back to T-Mobile Arena tied 1-1. The scoreline says these teams are even. Everything underneath it says [...]
Vegas won Game 1 of the Western Conference Final 4-2 at Ball Arena in Colorado despite getting out-shot 38-28 and out-attempted 80-52. That's the kind of line score that should make a Game 1 winner uncomfortable. It doesn't, and the reason is that the two things Game 1 told us are both pointing the same [...]
