Tomas Hertl

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

22 goals and 41 assists in 79 games — 63 points — at 19:17 a night. Minus-36, 183 shots at 12.0 per cent, six on the power play, one game-winner, 42 penalty minutes.

That minus-36 is the fourth-worst figure in this book, behind Andrew Peeke, Jordan Kyrou and Seth Jones, and it is the single most misleading number in this chapter.

50.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 1,182 minutes, the 53rd percentile — an even share of the chances. And his ice finished 53-68. The chances said 55.83-53.77.

Fifteen goals conceded on his ice above what the chance model expected, and two below at the other end. San Jose’s goaltending was worth minus-41.9 goals against the shots it faced — last in the league, and nearly eight goals worse than the thirty-first club. Every skater in this chapter carries a share of that, and Hertl carries the largest.

He started 56.5 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 80th percentile.

The Finesse Game

183 shots at a median of 17 feet — the shortest median of any forward in this chapter — with 62 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty.

Inside twenty feet: 109 shots on goal and 18 goals — 16.51 per cent, against a league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 48 shots and four goals, 8.33 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 22 shots and none.

Just under the rate from close, under it from the mid-slot, and everything he scored came from inside forty feet. On a club that finished twenty-fifth in goals, this is what a first-line centre’s chart looks like when the finishing is ordinary and the volume is not.

48 of his 256 tracked attempts are tip-ins, 18.8 per cent, and another twelve are wrap-arounds — a count only Stefan Noesen bettered in the league last season. Six slap shots all season.

That is a very specific profile: a 6-3 centre who generates almost everything within a stick’s length of the goaltender, either by redirecting it or by walking it out from behind. 87.9 mph at the 29th percentile, and the shot is beside the point.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 220 pounds, with 42 penalty minutes in 79 games.

2.92 miles a game at the 75th percentile, top speed 21.8 mph at the 24th, 0.9 bursts above twenty a game at the 50th. He covers ground without ever getting to speed, which at 220 pounds on the first line is the ordinary shape.

He is hard to move off the puck below the goal line, and the wrap-around count is the direct evidence: twelve of them in a season means twelve times he still had it when he came out the other side.

234 penalty minutes in 664 career games. He plays through contact rather than initiating it, and the size is used to hold position rather than to finish checks.

The Intangibles

Seventeenth overall in 2012, ten seasons, 664 games, 450 points, all of them here.

203 goals and a career 13.4 per cent. The best season is 74 points in 2018-19 and the most goals is 35 in the same year; the 63 last season came at the highest assist total of his career.

He is twenty-nine, the club’s second-leading scorer, on a roster that has just traded its best defenceman. What the file describes is a legitimate first-line centre on a team that is not going to give him a first-line season for some time.

The minus-36 will follow him around, and it should not. A 53rd-percentile chance share is what he actually produced.