Lawson Crouse

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

20 goals and 14 assists in 65 games — 34 points at 17:26 a night, minus-9, with 3 power-play goals and 1 shorthanded on 131 shots, converting at 15.3 per cent, and 52 penalty minutes.

Twenty goals against a previous career high of 15, and 56 in 346 games before this season. At 24 he became a scorer, and it is the first thing this club has had go right in three years.

46.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 865 minutes, the 19th percentile. His ice went 34-43 against an expectation of 30.61-35.71 — three goals of scoring above the chances, and seven more conceded than they predicted.

Beside Shayne Gostisbehere he took 48.3 per cent across 549 attempts, the highest of Gostisbehere’s six most-used partnerships. Beside Dysin Mayo, 45.4 — and Mayo without him was 36.5.

The Finesse Game

131 attempts at a median of 22 feet, 56 per cent of them from inside 20, at 95.2 mph — the 85th percentile of shot velocity. Heavy shot, close range, 15.3 per cent conversion at the 83rd percentile. That is a repeatable way to score goals and it is the reason to believe the 20.

What is not there is anything else. 1.74 even-strength points per 60 is the 46th percentile and 14 assists in 65 games says he finishes plays rather than making them. 21 per cent of his points came on the power play.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 214, and the top speed is 23.7 mph — the 97th percentile among the league’s forwards. A man that size moving that quickly is the rarest combination in this book, and it is what makes the forecheck work.

9.59 hits per 60 is the 87th percentile among forwards and 253 penalty minutes in 346 games is the record behind it. He arrives, and he arrives first.

1:45 a night shorthanded, the 82nd percentile among forwards. The complication is the discipline: 1.06 penalties taken per 60 is the 82nd percentile and he finished minus-0.21 on drawn against taken.

9.00 miles per sixty is the 8th percentile — he is fast in bursts and does not cover ground, which is the profile of a straight-line forechecker rather than a two-way winger.

The Intangibles

Eleventh overall in 2015 by Florida, traded to Arizona two days after his nineteenth birthday in the deal that moved Dave Bolland’s contract, and 346 games here since.

He is 25, and this was the year the club stopped waiting. A 6-4 winger who skates at the 97th percentile, hits at the 87th and has just scored 20 is a player a rebuilding team keeps rather than sells — and Arizona, which has almost nothing else that fits that sentence, will have to pay him like one.