Anders Lee

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

28 goals and 22 assists in 82 games — 50 points — at 17:13 a night. Minus-3, 214 shots at 13.1 per cent, six on the power play, four game-winners, 50 penalty minutes.

54 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 81st percentile, with his ice at 54-46 against an expectation of 55.61-47.38 — the goals arrived almost exactly where the chances said they would, which on this club is unusual.

He started 58.4 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 85th percentile: 384 attacking draws against 273.

Eleven seasons, 678 games, 416 points, all of them here.

The Finesse Game

214 shots at a median of 13 feet — the shortest chart on this club — with 70 per cent of them from inside twenty.

One hundred and forty-six shots on goal from inside twenty feet, sixth in the league. Only McDavid, Hyman, Matthew Tkachuk, Brady Tkachuk and Tavares put more on net from there. Twenty-two of his twenty-eight goals came from that band, at 15.07 per cent against a league forward rate of 17.71.

So: enormous volume from the paint at a slightly below-average conversion, which is the honest description and is worth more than either half alone.

And the mechanism. 78 tip-ins out of 303 tracked attempts — 26 per cent. Only Chris Kreider, at 98 out of 335, and Brady Tkachuk, at 87 out of 486, took more. Three men in the league make a quarter of their living this way and he is one of them.

125 wrist shots, 42 backhands, 11 slap. 94.4 mph at the 75th percentile, on eleven slap shots, so there is nothing in the number.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 234 pounds, with 50 penalty minutes and 399 in his career.

Top speed 21.8 mph, the 22nd percentile; 0.6 bursts a game, the 31st; 2.49 miles a game, the 41st. Bottom third of the league in speed, and it does not matter, because none of what he does happens more than fifteen feet from a goaltender.

He stands in front of the net, takes the cross-check, and gets his stick on the puck. That is the job and he is one of the best in the league at it.

He also clears his own crease and finishes checks along the wall, and at 234 pounds neither is theoretical.

The Intangibles

One hundred and fifty-second overall in 2009, the sixth round, and 678 games and 240 goals later he is the captain.

The forty-goal season in 2017-18 is the outlier; the shape underneath it has been twenty-five to thirty a year for a decade, all of it from inside twenty feet.

He is thirty-three and the skating was never there to lose. What has to hold is the willingness to stand where he stands, and a man with 399 penalty minutes and eleven seasons of it has given no sign of reconsidering.