This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2023-24 report →
Maxime Comtois
Anaheim Ducks Left Wing
Thirty-three points at twenty-two, sixteen at twenty-three, and a game built entirely out of hits taken and penalties traded.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | ANA | 10 | 2 | 5 | 7 | +3 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 22.2 | 14:35 |
| 2019-20 | ANA | 29 | 5 | 6 | 11 | -4 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 15.6 | 13:58 |
| 2020-21 | ANA | 55 | 16 | 17 | 33 | +3 | 40 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 94 | 17.0 | 15:28 |
| 2021-22 | ANA | 52 | 6 | 10 | 16 | -17 | 46 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 8.3 | 14:08 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 146 | 29 | 38 | 67 | -15 | 117 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 207 | 14.0 | 14:38 |
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
6 goals and 10 assists in 52 games — 16 points at 14:08 a night, minus-17, on 72 shots and 46 penalty minutes.
He had 16 goals and 33 points in 55 games in 2020-21 and 6 goals and 16 points in 52 games in this one. This was the season that was supposed to settle what he is, and it settled it in the wrong direction.
47.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 635 minutes, the 30th percentile. His ice went 25-39 against an expectation of 23.96-26.67 — a goal of finishing ahead of the chances, and twelve more conceded than they predicted, which is not a description of his defending so much as of what was behind him.
He needed help and it showed. With Cam Fowler he took 54.7 per cent of the expected goals; away from Fowler, 43.4. With Troy Terry, 54.4; away from Terry, 43.2. An eleven-point swing in both directions is a player who is carried rather than one who carries.
The Finesse Game
72 attempts at a median of 26 feet, 36 per cent from inside 20, converting at 8.3 per cent — the 23rd percentile — off 5.88 shots per 60 at the 23rd. Low volume and a low conversion in the same season is the combination with no good explanation.
The hands are not the problem. 0.73 takeaways per 60 is the 2nd percentile and 2.78 giveaways per 60 is among the highest figures for a forward in the league, and that pairing — never wins a puck, frequently loses one — is what a coach means when he says a player is not making good decisions.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 210, and this is the half that works. 9.06 hits per 60 is the 85th percentile among forwards and 117 penalty minutes in 146 career games is the record of a man who plays angry on purpose.
He drew 1.39 penalties per 60, the 91st percentile — genuinely difficult to defend when he is going to the net. And then: 1.55 penalties taken per 60 is the 91st percentile, and he gave back everything he drew and a little more. Minus-0.16 net, the 25th percentile. The edge is real and it costs exactly what it earns.
Top speed 21.8 mph at the 16th percentile and 9.13 miles per sixty at the 13th. He is not fast and he does not cover ground, which for a power forward whose whole method is arriving first is the most worrying line on the page.
The Intangibles
Fiftieth overall in 2017, 146 games, 67 points, and a world juniors captaincy that made him famous in Canada before he had played an NHL season.
He turns 24 in January, with one good season and one bad one on the record and 146 games to show for four years of trying. Anaheim has spent three years finding out whether the 2020-21 version was real, and the honest answer after this one is that it does not know, which for a club with Zegras and Terry ahead of him means the clock is running faster than his development is.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“9.06 hits per 60 is the 85th percentile among forwards”
“1.55 penalties taken per 60 is the 91st percentile, and he gave back everything he drew and a little more”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 635 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.3%
- 34th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.3%
- 32nd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 39 against. Expected: 24.0 and 26.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 12 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 52 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 35th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.00 a game
- Distance
- 2.15 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.3 mph
- 87th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2021-22 · 635 minutes at five-on-five
- Troy Terry35%
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, 2021-22
- The club
- ANA took 48.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.3% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 635 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cam Fowler | 54.7% | 43.4% | 49.7% |
| Kevin Shattenkirk | 41.8% | 49.8% | 47.4% |
| Jamie Drysdale | 45.8% | 48.0% | 48.1% |
54.7% together, 43.4% for him apart and 49.7% for Fowler apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.
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
109 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 8 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.