Max Domi

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

20 goals and 36 assists in 80 games — 56 points — at 17:46 a night between Chicago and Dallas. Minus-15, 179 shots at 11.2 per cent, eight on the power play, four game-winners, 82 penalty minutes.

56 points is his most since the 72 he scored in 2018-19.

44.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,134 minutes, the 11th percentile, with his ice at 46-51 against an expectation of 45.38-57.62 — six fewer goals against than the chances called for, which is the only thing keeping the row from being worse.

He started 53 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 63rd percentile, so the deployment does not explain the 11th percentile.

Those 1,134 minutes are a full season split between Chicago, which finished thirty-first of thirty-two in even-strength chance share, and Dallas, which finished twelfth.

The Finesse Game

179 shots at a median of 33 feet, with 31 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 31 per cent from beyond forty — as even a spread as a forward produces.

Inside twenty feet: 57 shots on goal and 10 goals — 17.54 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 71 shots and eight goals, 11.27 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 50 shots and two goals, 4.00 against a league rate of 4.16.

Stop and look at those six numbers together. Of the 55 forwards in this book with forty or more shots on goal in every band, Max Domi is the closest to the league rate in all three — off by 0.17, 0.22 and 0.16 of a percentage point. Nobody else in the edition is inside a full point at all three distances.

It is a coincidence and it is worth printing anyway, because it is what a shooting line looks like with no skill and no luck in it: he shoots from everywhere, and from everywhere he converts at exactly the rate the league does.

243 tracked attempts, 139 of them wrist shots, 34 slap and 34 snap. 91.1 mph at the 52nd percentile.

A career 10.3 per cent across 581 games says the 11.2 was not froth either.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 208 pounds, with 82 penalty minutes in 80 games and 512 in 581 career games — nearly a penalty minute a game for eight seasons.

Top speed 22.8 mph at the 76th percentile, 0.9 bursts above twenty a game at the 51st, 2.71 miles a game at the 62nd. Quick rather than fast, and not covering unusual ground.

He agitates, he answers back, and a good share of those 512 minutes are retaliation rather than the first offence. At 5-10 that is a choice about how he wants to be played.

The frame is thick and low and he is not easy to knock over, but he does not punish anybody and the penalty totals should not be read as though he does.

The Intangibles

Twelfth overall in 2013, eight seasons, 581 games, 370 points across Arizona, Montreal, Columbus, Carolina, Chicago and Dallas.

121 goals and 249 assists, and a minus-19. Six clubs in eight seasons, four of them in the last three.

He is twenty-eight, joining a club that finished fourth in the league to play behind two of the best centres in it.

The career has been a series of one-year proofs on bad teams. What Toronto is buying is the 2018-19 season, and what the record says it will get is roughly what it got last year — fifty-odd points, a lot of penalty minutes and a chance share that needs help.