Oskar Sundqvist

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

10 goals and 18 assists in 67 games — 28 points — at 13:52 a night between Detroit and Minnesota. Minus-4, 69 shots at 14.5 per cent, three on the power play, 28 penalty minutes.

28 points is his best total since the 31 he recorded in 2018-19.

43.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 9th percentile, across 746 minutes, with his ice at 28-29 against an expectation of 24.53-31.65.

He started 49 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 41st percentile, so the chance share is not explained by the deployment.

The Finesse Game

69 shots at a median of 15 feet, with 60 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 9 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside twenty feet: 43 shots on goal and nine goals — 20.93 per cent, above the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 15 shots and one goal. Beyond forty: nine shots and none.

Nine of his ten goals came from inside twenty feet, which given a fifteen-foot median is exactly what the chart predicts. A 14.5 per cent shooting percentage against a career 11.3.

97 tracked attempts, six of them slap shots, 13 tip-ins and seven deflections. 93.7 mph at the 69th percentile — a hard shot he almost never uses from distance.

The method is simple and it is the whole file: he gets to the front of the net at 6-3 and shoots from where he is standing.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 210 pounds. Top speed 21.2 mph at the 6th percentile, 0.3 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 9th, and 2.05 miles a game at the 18th.

He is one of the slowest forwards in the league on every measure at once, and he has played 355 NHL games anyway.

28 penalty minutes in 67 games and 141 in 355 career games. He is punishing on the forecheck and along the wall, and at 6-3 the contact is the point rather than a by-product.

He kills penalties and takes defensive-zone draws, which alongside the hitting is what a bottom-six centre of his description is dressed for.

The Intangibles

Eighty-first overall in 2012, the third round, eight seasons, 355 games, 123 points across Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit and Minnesota, and a Stanley Cup with St. Louis in 2019.

50 goals in eight years. The four full St. Louis seasons before he was traded produced 5, 31, 23 and 9 points, and this is a return to the club that made him.

He is twenty-nine. A slow, heavy, willing bottom-six centre with a Cup ring and 355 games is a specific and useful object, and the 9th-percentile chance share is the price of it.