Brett Howden

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

47 games, 9 goals and 11 assists at 10:39 a night, plus-9, twelve penalty minutes, 39 shots and two game-winners. Twenty-seventh overall in 2016 by Tampa Bay, four seasons, 225 games, 69 points.

The Finesse Game

Seventy-three per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet at a 17-foot median, the 4th-highest slot share of the 393 forwards who played forty games.

Nine goals from thirty-nine shots is 23.1 per cent, the 3rd-highest conversion of the same 393. Only Marcus Foligno and Ivan Barbashev were above it.

And 4.67 shots per 60 is the 6th percentile. Read those two together before reading either alone: this is the lowest shot rate on the club converting at a rate only two men in the league beat, on thirty-nine attempts across forty-seven games. Nine goals from thirty-nine shots will not happen twice — his career figure is twenty-five goals from 210 shots, which is 11.9 per cent, and that is the number to plan around.

2.26 even-strength points per 60 is the 73rd percentile and none of his twenty points came on the power play.

52.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 70th percentile and 48.9 per cent of the attempts the 38th, out of 50.6 per cent offensive-zone starts — an even chair, and the gap between the two shares says his minutes were outshot and outchanced in the right direction.

His ice went 25-18 against an expectation of 20.8-18.83 — four ahead in front and level behind.

The Physical Game

4.31 blocks per 60 is the 3rd-most of all 393 forwards, behind Austin Watson and Nick Bonino, on a ten-and-a-half-minute shift.

7.43 hits per 60 is the 78th percentile at 6-2 and 201 pounds, and twelve penalty minutes in forty-seven games — sixty-five across 225 career games.

The Intangibles

21.7 mph is the 10th percentile among the 365 tracked forwards and his shot is 81.1 mph, the 14th-softest of the same 365.

Slow, and a shot among the softest in the league, and a 23 per cent conversion. The three facts fit together exactly one way: everything he scores, he scores from inside seventeen feet, and the slot share above says he never tries anything else.

He is 24, a first-round pick who did not work in New York, with sixty-nine points in 225 games. The blocks, the hits and the shot chart are a fourth-line centre’s file and a good one. Twenty points at ten and a half minutes is real value. The 23.1 per cent is the reason not to pay for it twice.