Jonathan Marchessault

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

28 goals and 29 assists in 76 games — 57 points — at 17:08 a night. Plus-2, 234 shots at 12.0 per cent, nine on the power play, four game-winners, 21 penalty minutes.

52.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,068 minutes, the 63rd percentile, with his ice at 48-45 against an expectation of 47.35-43.46.

He started 54.2 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 68th percentile.

Twenty-eight goals at thirty-two is the fifth time he has scored twenty-five or more, all of them since he turned twenty-five.

The Finesse Game

234 shots at a median of 29 feet, and 320 tracked attempts.

Inside twenty feet: 69 shots on goal and 18 goals — 26.09 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 96 shots and nine goals, 9.38 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 62 shots and two goals, 3.23, below the league rate of 4.16.

Half again the rate from inside twenty and below it from the other two bands, which is a shooting record with the volume in the wrong place: a hundred and fifty-eight of his two hundred and twenty-seven shots on goal came from outside twenty feet and returned eleven goals.

37 slap shots out of 320 attempts is an 11.6 per cent share, and his shot is measured at 89.2 mph, the 40th percentile — soft, from 185 pounds.

A career 10.9 per cent across 556 games, so the 12.0 is a shade above his own line and nothing more.

He shoots from everywhere and always has, and 1,719 career shots from a five-foot-nine winger is the number that describes the player better than any rate does.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 185 pounds, with 21 penalty minutes in 76 games and 271 in 556 career games.

A top speed of 21.3 mph, the 9th percentile, and 0.4 bursts above twenty a game, the 18th. He covers 2.71 miles a game, the 62nd.

He is slow, and at thirty-two he is getting slower. That is measured rather than read, and it is the thing that will end this career.

He compensates by never stopping and by taking the puck into places a 185-pound man should not go, which is where the 26 per cent from inside twenty feet actually comes from.

He is not physical and cannot be. The 271 penalty minutes are stick fouls and frustration rather than contact.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, ten seasons, 556 games, 418 points across Columbus, Tampa Bay, Florida, and Vegas, a Stanley Cup, and the Conn Smythe Trophy for it.

188 goals and 230 assists, and a plus-37.

He is thirty-two, the last man on this roster from the expansion draft, and he has scored a hundred and fifty goals for it.

An undrafted five-foot-nine winger who played for three organisations before he was twenty-six, was claimed in an expansion draft, and won a Conn Smythe at thirty-two is the single best story in this book. The tracking says the feet are going. Everything else says he will score twenty-five again anyway.