Robert Thomas

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

72 games, 20 goals and 57 assists at 18:46 a night, plus-17, sixteen penalty minutes, 115 shots. Three of the twenty came on the power play and two short-handed. Twentieth overall in 2017 by St Louis, four seasons, 241 games, 164 points.

The Finesse Game

Fifty-seven of his seventy-seven points are assists, off 5.10 shots per 60 — the 54th-lowest of the 393 forwards who played forty games.

Twenty goals came out of 115 attempts at 17.4 per cent, the 91st percentile, from a 22-foot median with sixty-three per cent of them from the slot at the 89th. He does not shoot and when he does he is standing in the right place.

3.30 even-strength points per 60 is the 97th percentile — a hundredth of a point behind Vladimir Tarasenko and second-best on the club.

2.66 takeaways per 60 is the 14th-most of the 393, against 2.22 giveaways at the 85th percentile. A great deal happens on his stick in both directions.

51.9 per cent of the expected goals is the 66th percentile and 49.2 per cent of the attempts the 42nd, out of 56.3 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 139th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts. His ice went 72-51 against an expectation of 50.32-46.67 — twenty-two more goals in front than the model asked, which on a club that finished 2nd in the league in finishing is the house style.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 207 pounds, and 0.58 hits per 60 is the 2nd percentile among forwards.

Sixteen penalty minutes in seventy-two games, and 0.36 penalties taken per 60 at the 16th percentile. He is almost never in the box and almost never in a collision.

The Intangibles

10.28 miles per 60 is the 94th percentile among forwards against a 22.2 mph top speed at the 34th and 7.4 bursts per 60 at the 72nd.

A great deal of skating and not much of it fast. That is a fair description of a centre with fifty-seven assists and 115 shots, and the tracking is agreeing with the scoresheet rather than adding to it.

He is 23 and the seventy-seven points are a career high by thirty-five. Nothing in the record establishes whether this is a step or a level — one season at this rate is one season. What it does establish is a passer with elite even-strength production, elite takeaways and the shot volume of a fourth-liner.