Sam Reinhart

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

33 goals and 49 assists in 78 games — 82 points and a plus-25 at 17:46 a night, the 72nd percentile among forwards — with 13 penalty minutes. 3:21 a night on the power play is the 93rd percentile.

59.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,043 minutes — the 8th-highest of the 393 qualified forwards.

The Finesse Game

Sixty-five per cent of his shots came from the slot, the 93rd percentile, at a median of 18 feet — the 27th-closest shot chart of 393. Thirty-three goals on 186 shots is 17.7 per cent, the 27th-highest conversion rate in the league.

8.06 shots per 60 is the 63rd percentile. The volume is ordinary and everything else about the shooting is not: he goes to the same eighteen feet every night and a fifth of them go in.

Thirty-eight per cent of his points came on the power play, the 94th percentile — thirty-one of eighty-two, off 3:21 a night. That is the largest power-play dependence among Florida’s top forwards.

2.74 even-strength points per 60 is the 45th-most of 393, so the five-on-five half is real too.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 196. 2.12 hits per 60 is the 23rd percentile and 1.30 blocks the 31st. There is no contact game.

21.6 mph is the 9th percentile among forwards and 2.6 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 15th, with 9.53 miles per 60 at the 37th. He is among the slowest forwards the league measures and he scored 33 goals from eighteen feet, which is the same sentence this book keeps writing about the men who stand in the right place.

84.5 mph is the 52nd-softest recorded shot of the 365 qualified forwards. The shot is soft, close and lethal, which is a combination the position rewards more than any other.

0.217 penalties taken per 60 is the 17th-fewest of the 393 qualified forwards — thirteen minutes in seventy-eight games, on a club whose fourth-liner took ninety-two.

The Intangibles

Second overall in 2014, and 532 NHL games at 26 with 377 points and a career minus-72 — seven Buffalo seasons on clubs that finished low, and one here.

Eighty-two points is a career high by seventeen and it arrived in his first season out of Buffalo, on the best team in the league. That is the whole caveat and it is a real one.

With Anton Lundell he took 63.8 per cent of the chances over 694 attempts and 57.7 without him, and Lundell without him fell to 49.3. With Mason Marchment 67.8 over 695 — and Marchment has gone to Dallas.

With Radko Gudas behind him 63.3 over 589 attempts. Every combination on this page is above sixty, which is what the best club in hockey looks like from the inside.