Troy Terry

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

37 goals and 30 assists in 75 games — 67 points at 18:14 a night, minus-11, with 8 power-play goals and 7 game-winners on 192 shots, and 26 penalty minutes.

He had 52 goals in 204 career games before this season and 37 in this one. That is the report.

19.3 per cent shooting, the 96th percentile among the league’s forwards, against a career rate of 14.4. 51.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,138 minutes, the 62nd percentile, and 2.57 even-strength points per 60, the 84th percentile among forwards. His ice went 54-62 against an expectation of 50.35-47.66 — nearly four goals of finishing ahead of the chances his line created, and fourteen more conceded than they predicted.

He was the better half of the Getzlaf line. Together they took 50.9 per cent of the expected goals across 1,043 attempts; Terry apart from Getzlaf was 51.9, and Getzlaf apart from Terry was 45.0. Getzlaf has retired, and on this evidence the line does not miss him.

The Finesse Game

192 attempts at a median of 24 feet, 42 per cent from inside 20 feet and only 7 per cent from beyond 40, at 85.1 mph — the 17th percentile of shot velocity, the softest release of any forward here who scored 20.

That combination is the argument both ways. A man who takes almost every shot from the middle of the ice will convert above the league rate as long as he keeps getting there, and the goals are not a fluke of distance. But 19.3 per cent is a number nobody sustains, and 37 becomes 27 without a single thing about him changing.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 193, and 0.26 hits per 60 — the lowest figure of any forward in this book. He is not in a battle he does not have to be in.

The counterweight is real and is measured: 1.40 penalties drawn per 60, the 91st percentile, and plus-0.83 drawn against taken, the 97th. He is difficult to defend without fouling, which is a different and more useful kind of physical presence than hitting.

Top speed 22.4 mph, the 46th percentile, and 9.99 miles per sixty, the 79th. He is not fast; he is early, and the separation comes from where he chooses to be rather than from how quickly he gets there.

The Intangibles

148th overall in 2015, a fifth-round pick out of Denver who took four seasons to establish that he belonged and then scored 37.

He is 25, and he is the only forward on this roster over 24 that a rebuilding club would want to keep. Anaheim has to decide what to pay for 37 goals it cannot be sure it will see again, and it has to decide before the season that answers the question. Every month he keeps shooting near 19 per cent makes the answer more expensive; every month he does not makes it cheaper and worse.