William Carrier

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

16 goals and 9 assists in 56 games — 25 points — at 12:35 a night. Plus-15, 118 shots at 13.6 per cent, seven game-winners, 30 penalty minutes.

16 goals is a career high by seven, in his seventh season, and seven game-winners in fifty-six games from a fourth-line winger is the sort of line nobody believes.

54.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 83rd percentile, across 666 minutes, with his ice at 32-18 against an expectation of 29.07-23.99 — six fewer goals allowed than the chances called for.

And he started 34.4 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 6th percentile: 126 attacking draws against 240 defensive ones.

The 83rd percentile of chance share out of the 6th percentile of starts is the largest gap between deployment and result anywhere in this chapter, and on a Stanley Cup winner it is the fourth-line shift the whole thing was built on.

The Finesse Game

118 shots at a median of 14 feet, with 61 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty and 13 per cent from beyond forty.

Inside twenty feet: 76 shots on goal and 12 goals — 15.79 per cent, below the league forward rate of 17.71. From twenty to forty: 28 shots and four goals, 14.29 against a league rate of 11.05. Beyond forty: 13 shots and none.

Seventy-six shots on goal from inside twenty feet in fifty-six games is an enormous close-range volume for a twelve-minute forward, and it is where all of the offence comes from.

144 tracked attempts, 80 of them wrist shots, 24 backhands — a 16.7 per cent share — and three slap. His shot is measured at 80.8 mph, the 3rd percentile.

So the shot is one of the softest in the league and it does not matter, because everything is taken from fourteen feet. 52 goals in 374 career games at 8.8 per cent, and 16 of them last season.

He gets to the net by going through people rather than around them, which is the only route available to a man with that shot and that top speed.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 214 pounds, with 30 penalty minutes in 56 games and 188 in 374 career games.

2.1 bursts above twenty miles an hour a game at the 87th percentile, at a top speed of 22.5 mph, the 63rd, on 1.93 miles a game at the 12th — which is twelve minutes of ice time.

He reaches speed often for a fourth-liner, which on a forechecking line taking defensive-zone starts is the tool the job requires.

He is punishing, he finishes every check he can reach, and he hits harder than anybody on this roster. That is the reputation and the 188 penalty minutes are the part of it this book can see.

He wins pucks along the wall by force, and the sixth-percentile deployment is a coach saying he trusts him to.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seventh overall in 2013, the second round, seven seasons, 374 games, 99 points across Buffalo and Vegas, and a Stanley Cup.

52 goals and 47 assists, and a plus-14.

He is twenty-eight, and he has played more than sixty games twice in seven seasons — the hitting costs him.

A fourth-line winger who takes the sixth percentile of starts and produces the 83rd percentile of chances is the most undervalued kind of player there is. The 16 goals will not repeat and the shift will.