This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Mason McTavish

Forty-three points at twenty, and the ninth percentile in top speed.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2021-22	ANA	9	2	1	3	+3	2	0	0	1	12	16.7	13:05
2022-23	ANA	80	17	26	43	-19	44	7	0	1	161	10.6	15:22
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	89	19	27	46	-16	46	7	0	2	173	11.0	15:08

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

17 goals and 26 assists in 80 games — 43 points at 15:22 a night, minus-19, with 7 power-play goals on 161 shots, converting at 10.56 per cent, and 44 penalty minutes.

41.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,011 minutes, the 8th percentile, starting 36.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end — the 1st percentile in the league. He was twenty years old and being started in his own end against men.

His ice went 33-53 against an expectation of 38.22-53.24.

The Finesse Game

161 attempts at a median of 22 feet, 42 per cent from inside 20 and 12 per cent from beyond 40, off an 89.4 mph shot. Seven power-play goals at twenty is the number that matters — he is the net-front man on the first unit and he is already good at it.

The hands are better than advertised for a player sold as a power centre, and 46 points in 89 career games is ahead of schedule.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 219 and built like a third-line centre who will out-muscle second-line ones. He wins pucks below the goal line and he is not moved off the front of the net.

The skating is the flaw and it should be said plainly: 21.3 mph top end is the 9th percentile, and 0.3 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game is the 11th. He is not slow in the sense of being caught; he is slow in the sense that he will never create separation, and everything he becomes has to be built on strength and position instead.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2021, and two seasons in he is a top-six NHL centre at twenty with a World Junior gold behind him.

The comparison being made locally is to a young Ryan Getzlaf, and the shape of the player supports it — big, heavy, better hands than his body suggests, no foot speed. Getzlaf’s career says that shape works if the hockey sense is real. This is the season that starts to answer it.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“he is the net-front man on the first unit and he is already good at it”
wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line
“He wins pucks below the goal line and he is not moved off the front of the net.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He wins pucks below the goal line and he is not moved off the front of the net.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,011 minutes

Expected goals: 41.8%; 8th pct
Shot attempts: 43.2%; 9th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 33 for, 53 against. Expected: 38.2 and 53.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

86th

Numbers

8th

The report ranks him 78 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1011 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2022-23

The club: ANA took 39.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.8% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
The role: Second line, 1,011 minutes at five-on-five — 59th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Max Jones	42.3%	41.5%	38.2%
Cam Fowler	44.5%	40.0%	41.2%
Troy Terry	43.3%	41.0%	46.3%

42.3% together, 41.5% for him apart and 38.2% for Jones apart. Jones was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Jones than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

215 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.