Every week of the NHL season you can find a column here on everything that may not be making headlines yet — but probably should be.
Early in any NHL season there are always going to be unusual results that stem from small sample sizes.
Sometimes they defy expectations and sometimes they confirm our priors. We’ll begin today’s examination of under-the-radar phenomena by examining a team that isn’t surprising us on a big-picture level, but seems like a true outlier after a closer look.
The Sharks have limboed under a low bar
It’s fair to say nobody expected the San Jose Sharks to be a winning team in 2023-24. This team is coming off a 60-point campaign and traded away Norris Trophy winner Erik Karlsson during the summer.
You’d be hard-pressed to identify something this team projects to do well, so seeing them get out to a 0-4-1 start seems reasonable.
What’s noteworthy about these Sharks is not that they’re bad, but how dismal they’ve been. So far this season they’ve been outscored 19-7 and outshot by an average of 15.4 attempts per night.
To put that in perspective, San Jose’s 39.2 shots conceded per game would be the highest total among any team on record, and its 23.8 shots for would be the fourth-worst total since the stat has been tracked.
Considering we have shot data for 1,416 teams, that’s an impressive level of ineptitude.
San Jose’s schedule is a major mitigating factor here, though. The Sharks’ first four games of the season came against the Vegas Golden Knights, Colorado Avalanche, Carolina Hurricanes, and Boston Bruins. The only team they’ve played that’s even close to their weight class is the Nashville Predators.
Make no mistake, this team is not good — or close to it — but it’s too early to assume they might be one of the worst teams of all time.
Volume shooters not seeing results
The most reliable way to produce points in the NHL is to put pucks on net, whether that results in goals or assists via the rebound. A player’s shot total also provides a clue as to how much time they spend in the offensive zone in threatening situations.
So far this season, the NHL’s top volume shooters have not had as much luck as expected. Of the top 20 players by shots on goal, 12 of them have scored on less than 10% of their attempts and three — Roman Josi, Matthew Tkachuk, and Mikael Backlund — have yet to light the lamp.
Meanwhile, NHL goal leader Alex DeBrincat is tied for 26th in the league in shots.
None of this means there’s something inherently less effective about throwing the puck on net this year. League-wide save percentage (.905) is almost identical to last year’s average (.904).
Instead, this phenomenon is another reminder that odd results are inevitable early in the season. You probably shouldn’t be betting on DeBrincat to win the Rocket Richard Trophy, and if you’re a fantasy manager there might be some buy-low opportunities on players who are doing all the right things but not seeing the results — yet.
The Bruins’ center concerns linger
Because the Bruins have won all five of their games so far, there’s not much concern in Beantown about how the squad is looking.
That’s fair, but the Bruins have only faced one team that made the playoffs last season — the Los Angeles Kings — and it’s not hard to put up an impressive record when your goaltenders are producing a collective .953 save percentage.
While Boston’s solid team defense plays a role in that, it’s still an unsustainable number that will come down over time.
Entering the season, the biggest concern surrounding the Bruins was how they would replace the production they got from the retired Patrice Bergeron and David Krejčí down the middle.
Despite a two-goal effort from Matthew Poitras on Sunday, that question has yet to be answered.
Pavel Zacha can be expected to pick it up, but the rookie duo of Poitras and Johnny Beecher remains untested, and Charlie Coyle’s ideal role is on the third line.
So far this season, nine of Boston’s 16 goals have come from Brad Marchand and David Pastrňák. The Bruins will need more from their centers to have a successful campaign, and it’s still unclear what they’re going to get from them.
The NHL’s last sliver of perfection
We are deep enough into the season that perfection is hard to come by.
No skater has scored on all of his shots. No goaltender has kept every puck out. While a few teams have won every game, they’ve done so with a few wobbles along the way.
Thanks to their penalty-killing unit, the Dallas Stars can lay claim to a pocket of perfection. They are the only NHL team remaining that hasn’t conceded a power-play goal. Part of that has to do with the fact they’ve played just four games, but this is a group that should be excellent at killing penalties all year.
Last season, the Stars ranked third in the NHL in penalty-killing percentage (83.5%) and the team features a top-notch goaltender in Jake Oettinger, plus the league’s most prolific PK man in Esa Lindell.
Two other players have also logged more than 50% of the team’s penalty-killing time: Radek Faksa — a center who’s received Selke Trophy votes in four of the last six seasons and has topped a 55% faceoff win rate in each season since 2021-22 — and Jani Hakanpää, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound jumbo blueliner.
Paired with Lindell, that’s an intimidating crew and Dallas has solid complementary pieces to lean on like veterans Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, plus top all-around defenseman Miro Heiskanen.
Dallas has allowed just 16 shots on 11 kills so far this season. While the perfect record isn’t going to last, the Stars should be hard to exploit in 5-on-4 situations all year long.
Chicago’s faceoff-circle nightmares
While a team’s ability to win faceoffs rarely determines its fortunes, the Chicago Blackhawks are having a rare level of trouble securing the puck.
Chicago is currently winning just 37.1% of its draws, which is a ludicrous number. For some context, the lowest percentage a team has managed over a full season is 44.1% (1997-98 Tampa Bay Lightning).
The reason we rarely talk about team faceoff rate as a driving factor of success is that it normally exists within a relatively tight band of outcomes. The Blackhawks are currently living outside the established norms, and there’s reason to believe they might continue to do so.
Here’s a summary of the top five faceoff takers on the team this season:
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Jason Dickinson — Career faceoff win rate of 44.8%
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Connor Bedard — Relatively small 18-year-old rookie, 35.1% win rate so far
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Lukas Reichel — Winger with a career faceoff win rate of 38.8%
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Ryan Donato — Winger with a career faceoff win rate of 42.0%
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Tyler Johnson — Hasn’t been a full-time center since 2020-21, career win rate of 49.5%
Other than Johnson, the picture is pretty grim.
In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter how this affects the Blackhawks’ competitive prospects. Chicago isn’t going anywhere this year anyway.
However, if the Blackhawks’ inability to win a draw persists, the club will be an interesting case study for how important faceoffs can be in extreme cases — particularly on special teams where losing possession can be extremely detrimental.
So far Chicago has been a mixed bag on that count. Its power play has been dismal (7.4%), but its penalty kill has been more than respectable (83.3%).
