Timo Meier

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

40 goals and 26 assists in 78 games — 66 points — split between San Jose and New Jersey, at 19:23 a night. Minus-19, 327 shots at 12.2 per cent, 43 penalty minutes, and 17 of the 40 goals on the power play.

Forty goals and a minus-19 in the same line is the file in one sentence.

55.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 87th percentile, with his ice at 60-59 against an expectation of 62.6-50.89 — eight goals worse than the chances at the defensive end, on 58.9 per cent attacking-zone starts, the 87th percentile.

Seven seasons, 472 games, 330 points. The 35 goals in 2021-22 and the 40 in this one are the two best.

The Finesse Game

327 shots at a median of 25 feet, and 468 tracked shot attempts, the most on this club.

Inside twenty feet: 128 shots on goal and 25 goals — 19.53 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 137 shots and 14 goals, 10.22 per cent. Beyond forty: 58 shots and 2 goals.

So the goals come from the paint and the volume comes from everywhere, which describes a shooter who will take what is in front of him and is genuinely better than the league only when he is close.

247 wrist shots out of 468 attempts, 51 slap, 48 tip-ins. 96.3 mph at the 85th percentile, on fifty-one slap shots, so that reading is worth something near face value.

Seventeen power-play goals is the specific asset. He is the one-timer on the off wing, and 26 assists against 40 goals says the puck stops with him.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 220, with 43 penalty minutes.

Top speed 22.7 mph, the 71st percentile; 2.2 bursts a game, the 89th; 3.15 miles a game, the 87th.

That is a heavy winger who moves like a light one, and it is why the forecheck works: he arrives on the puck at speed and there is 220 pounds behind it when he does.

He finishes checks and wins pucks along the wall, and none of what he gives up is physical. It is positional, and it shows in the eight goals his ice conceded past expectation.

The Intangibles

Ninth overall in 2015 and seven seasons in San Jose, six of them on clubs going backwards, before the trade that brought him here.

The career plus-minus is minus-37 and the career goal total is 163 in 472 games. Both are real, and the first has now followed him to a club that finished third overall.

What New Jersey bought is the forty goals and the forecheck. What it has to solve is the thing San Jose never did — and on a club already twenty-fifth in finishing, forty goals is worth solving it for.