Nicklas Backstrom

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

47 games, 6 goals and 25 assists at 17:29 a night, minus-8, twelve penalty minutes, 68 shots, one power-play goal and one game-winner. Fourth overall in 2006 by Washington, fifteen seasons, 1,058 games, 1,011 points.

The Finesse Game

Twenty-five assists against six goals, and 747 of his 1,011 career points are assists, off 4.96 shots per 60 which is the 39th-lowest of 393 forwards.

Forty-five per cent of his points came on the power play, the 98th percentile, off 3:40 a night — the 13th-most of the 393. That is the largest power-play dependence of any forward on this roster and one of the largest in the league.

1.58 even-strength points per 60 is the 37th percentile.

Fifty-six per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet at a 22-foot median.

45.5 per cent of the expected goals is the 16th percentile and 47.3 per cent of the attempts the 26th, out of 59.4 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 63rd-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. The softest chair produced the worst pair of shares of any Washington forward.

His ice went 25-30 against an expectation of 20.55-24.6 — four ahead in front and five and a half more against.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 202 pounds, and twelve penalty minutes in forty-seven games.

1.17 hits per 60 is the 31st-fewest of the 393 and 1.17 blocks the 22nd percentile.

0.146 penalties drawn per 60 is the 3rd-fewest of all 393 forwards. Only Josh Bailey and Victor Rask were fouled less often.

The Intangibles

0.073 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 is the fewest of all 365 tracked forwards. 20.7 mph is the 2nd-slowest top speed of the same 365.

Those two figures want stating plainly and without decoration: across forty-seven games the chips recorded him going over twenty miles an hour almost exactly once, and no forward in the league who played forty games was measured slower but one.

9.29 miles per 60 is the 21st percentile, so the ground covered is low as well.

He is 34, fourth overall in 2006, with 1,011 points in 1,058 games and 747 assists. The passing is intact and the power play is where it lives. Thirty-five games lost, the worst possession shares on the roster out of the softest chair on it, and the lowest sprint count in the league are the file, and none of the three is the sort of thing that reverses.