Blake Wheeler

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

65 games, 17 goals and 43 assists at 19:32 a night, minus-15, thirty-six penalty minutes, 167 shots, three power-play goals and two game-winners. Fifth overall in 2004 by Phoenix, fourteen seasons, 1,046 games, 867 points.

The Finesse Game

Forty-three of his sixty points were assists, and 571 of 867 career points are, against 2.30 even-strength points per 60 at the 76th percentile.

7.89 shots per 60 is the 61st percentile at 10.2 per cent, from a 23-foot median with fifty-seven per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet.

Seventeen goals is the lowest full-season total of his career and sixty points is his lowest in a full season since 2012-13.

Thirty-three per cent of his points came on the power play, off 3:11 a night with the man advantage, the 90th percentile.

50.0 per cent of the expected goals is the 53rd percentile and 50.1 per cent of the attempts the 53rd — dead level in both, out of 58.1 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 96th-highest of 652 skaters. A soft chair producing exactly even shares is the file’s problem in one line.

His ice went 43-47 against an expectation of 45.23-45.15, two short in front and two more against.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 222 pounds, and thirty-six penalty minutes in sixty-five games — 695 across 1,046.

2.93 hits per 60 is the 36th percentile and 1.75 blocks the 52nd.

0.52 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.85 taken is a net of minus 0.33, the 14th percentile among forwards — at 36, the calls have stopped going his way.

The Intangibles

He captained the club at 19:32 a night, the 92nd percentile among forwards, with 3:11 on the power play.

9.03 miles per 60 is the 31st-lowest of the 365 tracked forwards. Only thirty forwards in the league covered less ground per minute of ice, and he was given the 92nd-percentile workload to cover it in.

7.8 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the 75th percentile against a 22.3 mph top speed at the 43rd, so the sprints are still there and the top end is not.

He is 36, fifth overall in 2004, with 867 points in 1,046 games and 571 assists. The passing is intact and the mileage says the rest is going. A 36-year-old winger playing the ninety-second percentile of minutes off the thirty-first-lowest mileage in the league is a club spending ice it does not have to spare — and Winnipeg finished 30th in the league in finishing while doing it.