Quinton Byfield

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

3 goals and 19 assists in 53 games — 22 points — at 14:04 a night. Plus-13, 74 shots at 4.1 per cent, 30 penalty minutes.

53.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 79th percentile, with his ice at 37-23 against an expectation of 28.14-24.30 — nine goals better than the chances at the offensive end, none of them his.

Three seasons, 99 games, 33 points. He was the second pick of the 2020 draft and he is twenty-one.

The Finesse Game

74 shots at a median of 22 feet, 48 per cent from inside twenty and 18 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside forty feet: 59 shots on goal and 2 goals — 3.39 per cent. Beyond forty: 12 shots, 1 goal.

That 3.39 per cent is the finding of this report and possibly of this chapter. Fifty-nine shots from good positions is a real body of work and two goals is what a defenceman returns from the blue line, not what a top-six forward returns from the slot. The league converts inside-forty shots at better than three times that rate.

He gets to the right places — the median of 22 feet says so, and so does the 48 per cent from inside twenty. Once he is there, the puck does not go in.

95.5 mph at the 81st percentile, on three slap shots, so the number is close to noise. What is not noise is nineteen assists against three goals: he is making the play instead of taking it.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 230 at twenty-one, and 30 penalty minutes.

Top speed 23.0 mph, the 86th percentile; bursts 2.2 a game, the 89th. For a man that size those are exceptional readings, and they are the reason he went second overall.

2.24 miles a game, the 26th percentile — a fourteen-minute assignment, so read the distance as ice time.

He protects the puck with his body and is very difficult to knock off it, and he has not yet learned to use the size in front of the net, which is the one place on the ice where 230 pounds settles arguments.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2020 out of Sudbury, three seasons, ninety-nine games and eight goals.

45.9 per cent of his five-on-five shifts started in the attacking zone, the 30th percentile. Los Angeles does not shelter young players, which is either the making of him or the reason the goals have not come.

The case for him is the size, the speed and the nineteen assists. The case against is 8 goals in 99 NHL games and a 3.39 per cent conversion rate from good ice. He is twenty-one and the finishing is the only thing missing, which is also the hardest thing to add.