Conor Sheary

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

15 goals and 22 assists in 82 games — 37 points — at 15:46 a night for Washington. Plus-9, 154 shots at 9.7 per cent, two on the power play, two shorthanded, 22 penalty minutes.

He played all 82 for the first time in his career, at thirty.

49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,072 minutes, the 41st percentile, with his ice at 48-41 against an expectation of 48.00-49.12 — exactly the goals the chances predicted at the good end and eight fewer than they predicted at the other.

He started 58.2 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 85th percentile.

The Finesse Game

154 shots at a median of 23 feet.

From twenty to forty feet: 68 shots on goal and eight goals — 11.76 per cent, on the league rate of 11.05. Inside twenty: 59 shots and seven goals, 11.86, well below the league forward rate of 17.71. Beyond forty: 19 shots and none.

On the rate from the mid-slot and a long way under it from close range, which on a hundred and twenty-seven shots on goal is a genuine shortfall rather than noise: a league-rate season from inside twenty feet would have been eleven goals rather than seven.

A 9.7 per cent shooting percentage against a career 12.4 across 967 shots. The career figure is the better one and it is a good figure for a 5-8 winger.

217 tracked attempts, 29 of them tip-ins and eleven slap. 90.9 mph at the 50th percentile — an entirely ordinary shot, which for a man of his size is a small achievement in itself.

The Physical Game

5-8 and 180 pounds — the shortest skater in this chapter — with 22 penalty minutes in 82 games and 112 in 531 career games.

1.6 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 77th percentile, a top speed of 22.5 mph at the 60th, 2.37 miles a game at the 36th. He sprints often on modest ground covered, which is the fourth-line and third-line shape.

He is not a physical player and cannot be at 180 pounds. The game is played in the space between checkers, and when a defenceman gets a body on him the puck is gone.

He kills penalties and has two shorthanded goals from last season alone, which for a small winger is the part of the file that keeps him dressed on nights when the scoring does not come.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, eight seasons, 531 games, 252 points across Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Washington, and two Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh.

120 goals from a 5-8 winger who was never drafted. The 53-point season in 2016-17 alongside Sidney Crosby is the peak, and the six seasons since have run between 22 and 43.

He is thirty-one, joining a club that has won two championships and needs bottom-six forwards who can play in the attacking zone.

What the file records is one of the more improbable careers in this book: five hundred and thirty-one NHL games from a man nobody drafted, at a size the league spent most of that period trying to eliminate.