Owen Tippett

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

27 goals and 22 assists in 77 games — 49 points — at 17:26 a night. Minus-17, 231 shots at 11.7 per cent, eight on the power play, four game-winners, sixteen penalty minutes.

Twenty-seven goals after 45 in his first 192 career games, at twenty-four.

49.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 48th percentile, with his ice at 52-60 against an expectation of 46.46-47.66 across 1,088 minutes — five and a half goals better than the chances at the attacking end and twelve worse at the defensive.

He started 53.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 67th percentile.

Four seasons, 192 games, 89 points, a career minus-30.

The Finesse Game

231 shots at a median of 33 feet, and an unusual distribution.

Beyond forty feet: 75 shots on goal and 7 goals — 9.33 per cent, against a league forward rate of 4.16. Inside twenty: 64 shots and 12 goals, 18.75 per cent. From twenty to forty: 88 shots and 8 goals, 9.09 per cent, below the league’s 11.05.

Read the first and third of those together, because the shape is backwards. He converts from beyond forty feet at more than twice the league rate and from the mid-slot at less than the league rate, which is the reverse of every other forward in this chapter.

On seventy-five shots, seven goals is four above what the league would produce, and that is not a large enough surplus to be sure of. What is certain is that the shot itself is real: 171 wrist shots and 32 slap out of 315 tracked attempts, at a measured 98.1 mph, the 92nd percentile.

22 assists in seventy-seven games. He is a shooter and the play does not run through him.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 210, with sixteen penalty minutes.

2.6 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game, the 93rd percentile; top speed 22.8 mph, the 80th. 2.78 miles a game, the 66th.

Genuinely fast and frequently so, which is what makes the long shots possible: he arrives at the blue line with speed and releases before a defenceman closes.

What he does not do is play a physical game. Sixteen penalty minutes across seventy-seven games from a 210-pound winger says he is not in the traffic, and the twelve goals past expectation on his ice at the defensive end say the same thing the other way.

He does not forecheck heavy and does not win pucks along the wall.

The Intangibles

Tenth overall in 2017 to Florida, four seasons of not quite establishing himself there, and a trade to Philadelphia at twenty-three.

45 goals in 192 games, of which 27 came last season, and a career minus-30.

He is twenty-four and the shot and the skating are both genuinely good. What the file needs is the defensive half, because a winger who scores twenty-seven and is on the ice for twelve goals past expectation against is worth roughly nothing at even strength.