Frank Vatrano

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

With Florida, then the Rangers. 18 goals and 14 assists in 71 games — 32 points at 13:10 a night, plus-4, with 1 power-play goal on 161 shots, converting at 11.2 per cent, and 22 penalty minutes.

54.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 862 minutes, the 79th percentile, and 54.2 per cent of the shot attempts, the 82nd — the best play-driving numbers of any forward Anaheim added this summer. His ice went 36-31 against an expectation of 39.35-33.2: three goals of scoring missing, and two fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The caution attached to that is Florida. He played two-thirds of the season for one of the best possession clubs in the league before the deadline sent him to the Rangers, and 13:10 a night is the 25th percentile of ice time — a fourth-line shift on a very good team.

The Finesse Game

10.34 shots per 60 is the 91st percentile among the league’s forwards. He shoots more often than almost anybody, off a genuine release at 94.2 mph, the 79th percentile.

And he shoots from outside. A median of 32 feet, and 37 per cent of his attempts from the slot — the 8th percentile. That combination is the whole player: high volume, long range, an 11.2 per cent conversion at the 48th percentile. Given a bigger role he is a twenty-goal scorer, and he will not be the man standing in the blue paint when one is needed.

1.41 takeaways per 60 at the 34th percentile, and 6 per cent of his points on the power play at the 27th. There is no playmaking case: 101 goals against 69 assists in 401 games.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 203, thickly built, and 4.37 hits per 60 is the 56th percentile — he finishes checks without being a physical presence, which at his height is the right way round.

Top speed 23.0 mph, the 81st percentile, and 9.8 bursts above 20 mph per 60, the 87th. He gets to speed often and holds it, and that is what makes the volume shooting possible: he arrives in a shooting lane before the defence has closed it.

The Intangibles

Undrafted out of Massachusetts, signed by Boston, and 401 NHL games and 101 goals later he has been traded twice. He is a self-made player and the shot is the reason.

He is 28, signed for three years. On a club that scored 232 goals he is a straightforward improvement, and on a club rebuilding around two twenty-one-year-olds he is a shooter who does not create anything for anybody else. Both of those are true at once, and which one matters depends on whether Anaheim is trying to be respectable in 2023 or good in 2025.