Cole Perfetti

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

8 goals and 22 assists in 51 games — 30 points — at 14:58 a night, in his first real NHL season, at twenty-one. Plus-10, 90 shots at 8.9 per cent, one on the power play, 16 penalty minutes.

Fifty-one games, ended by injury.

51.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 676 minutes, the 61st percentile, with his ice at 29-19 against an expectation of 27.81-25.82 — seven fewer goals allowed than the chances called for, which is where the plus-10 comes from.

He started 61.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 93rd percentile: 237 attacking draws against 148 defensive ones. Sheltered, which is right for a twenty-one-year-old.

Thirty points in fifty-one games is a forty-eight-point rate from a rookie, and it is the best thing on this page.

The Finesse Game

90 shots at a median of 25 feet, with 24 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 11 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside twenty feet: 29 shots on goal and five goals — 17.24 per cent, on the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 44 shots and one goal, 2.27 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 13 shots and none.

One goal from forty-four mid-slot shots is a fifth of what the league gets, and it is where the whole of a modest shooting season went.

122 tracked attempts, 87 of them wrist shots — a 71.3 per cent share, the highest of any forward on this roster — and three slap. His shot is measured at 80.5 mph, the 2nd percentile.

That figure is the hard limit on the file. A maximum shot speed does not need a large sample to be honest, and 80 mph means goals will have to come from inside twenty feet or from somebody else’s stick.

The 22 assists say he already knows that. He holds the puck, he waits, and 27 assists against 10 goals in 69 career games is the shape of the player.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 185 pounds, with 16 penalty minutes in 51 games.

A top speed of 21.0 mph — the 3rd percentile — and 0.2 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game, the 4th. He covers 2.57 miles a game, the 49th.

He is among the slowest skaters in this book, and at twenty-one that is the most serious thing in the file. The mileage says he works; the top speed says he will not beat anybody to a puck.

He is not physical and at 185 pounds is not going to be.

He protects the puck by putting his body between it and a defender and by not needing much space, which is the only route open to a small, slow forward and is exactly how he produced thirty points.

The Intangibles

Tenth overall in 2020, two seasons, 69 games, 37 points, all of them here.

10 goals and 27 assists, and a plus-11.

He is twenty-one, the youngest player on this roster, and a tenth-overall pick who produced at a forty-eight-point rate in his first real season.

Everything about the production is encouraging and everything about the measurements is not. A 3rd-percentile top speed and a 2nd-percentile shot from a first-round forward is a difficult pair of facts, and what the assists suggest is that he already plays a game that does not need either.