Brad Marchand

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

32 goals and 48 assists in 70 games — 80 points at 19:15 a night, plus-16, with 7 power-play goals and 2 shorthanded on 242 shots and 97 penalty minutes.

64.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 931 minutes, the 99th percentile. His ice went 52-34 against an expectation of 48.93-27.55 — three goals of scoring above the chances and more than six more conceded than they predicted.

3.08 even-strength points per 60 is the 94th percentile among forwards and 10.78 shots per 60 is the 93rd. Eighty points at thirty-four, on a line that took two-thirds of the chances.

The Finesse Game

242 attempts at a median of 30 feet — the 91st percentile for distance — with 42 per cent from inside the slot, converting at 13.2 per cent. He is not a net-front scorer and never has been; the goals come from the half-wall and the top of the circle off a release nobody reads early.

48 assists in 70 games and 444 in a career of 874. The passing is the better half and has been for five years.

2.76 giveaways per 60 is among the highest figures for a forward in the league. He holds the puck until something opens, and on a line with Bergeron and Pastrnak something usually does.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 180, and the whole method is to be impossible to play against without fouling. 1.47 penalties drawn per 60 is the 92nd percentile and 1.56 taken is the 91st — he is at both ends of that ledger every night, and 899 penalty minutes in 874 games is the career behind it.

3.47 hits per 60 at the 45th percentile. He is not physical in the ordinary sense; he is present, constantly, in a way that costs opponents their composure and costs Boston roughly as many power plays as it wins.

1:38 a night shorthanded, the 78th percentile among forwards, with 2 shorthanded goals.

Top speed 22.1 mph at the 30th percentile. He is not fast and never was; the separation is anticipation.

The Intangibles

Seventy-first overall in 2006, 874 games in one uniform, 795 points, a Stanley Cup at twenty-three and two more finals since.

He is 34, and he had surgery on both hips in the summer, which will cost him the opening weeks of the season. A 5-9 winger whose game is built on being first to a loose puck and last to leave a scrum is exactly the player whose hips decide when the career ends, and Boston has no answer for what the top line looks like without him.